Preamble

The House met at half-past Two o'clock

PRAYERS

[Mr. SPEAKER in the Chair]

PRIVATE BUSINESS

BUCKS WATER BOARD BILL (By Order)

Consideration, as amended, deferred till Thursday.

TORQUAY CORPORATION (WATER) BILL (By Order)

Second Reading deferred till Thursday, 5th March.

Oral Answers to Questions — NATIONAL FINANCE

Purchase Tax

Mr. Nabarro: asked the Chancellor of the Exchequer whether he has now had an opportunity to discuss with leaders of the British motor industry the damage which is being caused to their efficiency and to the maintenance and development of their export trade by the retention of the Purchase Tax at 30 per cent. on commercial vehicles chassis and 60 per cent. on motor cars; and whether he has now had adequate opportunity to examine their arguments and the need for remedial action.

The Chancellor of the Exchequer (Mr. Derick Heathcoat Amory): I would refer my hon. Friend to the reply given to the hon. Member for Northfield (Mr. Chapman) on 5th February.

Mr. Nabarro: That was no good at all. Does not my right hon. Friend recall that he gave the hon. Member for Birmingham, Northfield (Mr. Chapman) and myself some unequivocal assurances in Committee on the Finance Bill last May that he would undertake to enter into negotiations with motor vehicle manufacturers? Is he aware that we understood that answer to imply that he proposed to make a statement on these matters long ahead of the 1959 Budget?

Would my right hon. Friend comment on those facts?

Mr. Amory: My only comment would be that I should not care to give the kind of reply which my hon. Friend would regard as a good one on these matters just at the present time.

Mr. Blackburn: Can the right hon. Gentleman say what loss of revenue there would be if Purchase Tax on motor cars were abolished and motor cars ceased to rank as a business expense?

Mr. Amory: If the hon. Member will put a Question on the Order Paper, I will see whether I can give him an answer or not.

Mr. Nabarro: A very good answer that time.

Mr. Nabarro: asked the Chancellor of the Exchequer whether he has yet given an indication to the Organisation for European Economic Co-operation that he will give consideration to the recommendation, contained in its report of 7th December, 1958, that there is a long-term need for the reduction of Purchase Tax in the United Kingdom especially in the highest ranges; and what has been the precise nature of his reply to the proposal.

Mr. Amory: I assume my hon. Friend has in mind the survey of economic conditions in the United Kingdom published by the Organisation for European Economic Co-operation in November, 1958. The survey called for no reply from me but I have noted the views expressed.

Mr. Nabarro: Can my right hon. Friend give the House an assurance that the rupture of negotiations on the subject of the European Common Market and the Free Trade Area will not in any way influence any future decision which he may take arising from advice given by O.E.E.C.? Does my right hon. Friend still regard that advice as valid and useful, and will he have some regard to it between now and April?

Mr. Amory: I am always glad of advice from any quarter, and I always attach the appropriate weight to that advice.

Mrs. Hill: asked the Chancellor of the Exchequer whether he has considered the communication of the hon. Member for Manchester, Wythenshawe, regarding certain types of gas and coke fires; and


whether he will make a further statement with regard to Purchase Tax on this type of combined appliance.

Mr. Amory: Yes, Sir. As I have written to my hon. Friend to explain, combination gas and coke fires of the kind she has in mind are taxable at the rate of 30 per cent. She will not expect me to say more than that I will bear in mind her interest in this appliance.

Mrs. Hill: Is my right hon. Friend aware that I am very grateful for his promise that he will bear this problem in mind when he is considering his Budget, because the tax on the whole appliance has made it extra costly when people are trying to comply with clean air legislation?

Mr. Amory: My hon. Friend will realise that there is no anomaly, since gas and electric stoves are subject to Purchase Tax and only coke and other hard fuel stoves are exempt.

Dame Florence Horsbrugh: Will my right hon. Friend bear in mind that the hold-up on the subject of fuel and heating is delaying what should be a major step forward in Manchester's hospital arrangements, a step which is badly needed?

Mr. Amory: I will take note of what my right hon. Friend has said.

Mr. Nabarro: asked the Chancellor of the Exchequer for what reasons he has announced imposition of Purchase Tax on second-hand gem jewellery; whether tax is payable each time the article is resold or only on first resale; how the wholesale value is to be assessed; what revenue anticipations he has in this context; what articles, other than second-hand gem jewellery, attract Purchase Tax when sold second-hand; whether he now proposes to extend Purchase Tax to other articles when sold second-hand; and, having regard to the wide implications for trade and industry of his decision to extend the scope of Purchase Tax, whether he will make a statement.

Mr. Amory: The answers to these seven questions respectively are: to remove a cloak for malpractices; each time there is a sale by wholesale to an unregistered person; in accordance with the statutory definition of value; no

estimate is possible; imported chargeable goods, secondhand at the time of importation; no, Sir; no. Sir.

Mr. Nabarro: Is not this a disgraceful precedent? Is not it the fact that in the entire history of Purchase Tax law since 1940, it has never been applied to second-hand articles? Having regard to the precedent, which I am very grieved that a Conservative Chancellor should establish, will not it provide the means in the future for another Chancellor, for example, to put Purchase Tax on second-hand motor-cars, or second-hand fur coats, and second-hand furniture, finishing up with the wares of the rag-and-bone man? [HON. MEMBERS: "Speech."] Is there to be no end to these predatory habits of my right hon. Friend?

Mr. Amory: I do not think that I agree with anything that my hon. Friend has said in that supplementary question. It is, of course, not an extension of Purchase Tax in a new field. It is the withdrawal of an administrative concession.

Mr. Nabarro: It has never been done before.

Mr. Amory: My hon. Friend is not right in saying that there is no precedent. Purchase Tax is payable on articles eligible for Purchase Tax but imported second-hand.

Mr. V. Yates: While I appreciate the Chancellor's remarks on malpractices, may I ask if he will bear in mind the fact that reputable jewellers believe that, if Purchase Tax were reduced slightly below its present level, it would make it quite unprofitable for anyone to indulge in the practices to which he referred?

Mr. Amory: I remember with interest the hon. Gentleman saying something of the same kind last year. I did, in fact, reduce the Purchase Tax, but I am afraid that the abuses have continued.

Mr. M. Lindsay: May I ask whether my right hon. Friend is aware that the number of jewellery craftsmen in Birmingham is falling year after year, and that the Purchase; Tax is one of the main reasons for it?

Mr. Amory: I will take note of my hon. Friend's views.

Mr. Nabarro: On a point of order. In view of the highly unsatisfactory nature of the reply, I beg leave to give notice that I will raise this matter on the Motion for the Adjournment at the earliest minute.

Mr. H. Wilson: Further to that point of order. Is it in order to raise on the Motion for the Adjournment a matter involving legislation on tax changes?

Mr. Speaker: We can consider that question when the hon. Member gives notice.

Mr. Nabarro: On a fresh point of order. Did not you rule in November, 1957, Sir, that a Member of this House might raise on the Motion for the Adjournment any matter affecting the Purchase Tax, including individual Purchase Tax rates, having regard to the fact that no new legislation is required, and that only a Treasury Order is entailed?

Mr. Speaker: The general position is that if these matters can be done by regulations, they can be raised on the Motion for the Adjournment, but not if an alteration of a Statute is required. However, it depends what the remedy for the hon. Member's grievance is.

Mrs. Mann: asked the Chancellor of the Exchequer if, in anticipation of his Budget statement, he will survey the items which contribute to safety in the home, and which carry Customs Duty and Purchase Tax, with a view to relieving the nation of costly and continuous medical, surgical, and hospital treatment.

Mr. Amory: I know the hon. Lady's interest in this matter and I shall keep it in mind during my annual review of taxation.

Mrs. Mann: Is the Chancellor aware that the Government have just undertaken a big campaign to lessen the incidence of home accidents, and that the one remaining nigger in the woodpile is himself? Will he get out of the woodpile as quickly as possible?

Mr. Amory: I am very disappointed. When I was working in another capacity, I used to receive the most charming letters from the hon. Lady on the subject of food. I am sorry now that she has seen fit to refer to me as the nigger in the woodpile after those very happy days which I re-

member when I used to receive letters from her on food.

Colonel Beamish: asked the Chancellor of the Exchequer what consultations he had with representatives of the jewel trade as a whole, and with the Fine Art Auctioneers of London or the London Chamber of Commerce, before the recent proposal to reimpose Purchase Tax at 30 per cent. on second-hand gem jewellery; what representations he has had from the trade since this proposal was made; and whether he has been made aware of the unanimous views in the trade of the effect that this proposal will have on the London market, which is at present held in world-wide esteem.

Mr. Amory: No formal consultations, but the Customs and Excise keeps itself informed of trade opinion through many informal contacts. I have just received the London auctioneers' memorandum on this matter and I will give this and any other submissions from the trade my careful consideration.

Colonel Beamish: If there is a nut here which needs cracking—which seems to be the case—why not prosecute the offender in the normal way, instead of producing this large and hefty sledgehammer, the use of which may easily hurt the innocent? In view of the importance of the representations made to my right hon. Friend, may I ask him to postpone the reimposition of this tax until he has had a full opportunity for consultation with the recognised representatives of the second-hand gem trade in London?

Mr. Amory: Of course, we shall be glad to authorise prosecutions when satisfactory evidence can be collected, but that is often difficult to do. I will consider the suggestion of some deferment while I am considering the further representations being made to me, and I will make an announcement on that point within the next two or three days.

Income Tax (Schedule A)

Mr. Barter: asked the Chancellor of the Exchequer the amount claimed, or his estimate of the amount claimed, in the latest convenient year, by residential owner-occupiers as being payable by them in respect of their owner-occupied residential accommodation by way of


ground rent, and the amount of Income Tax at standard rate which they would be entitled to deduct from such payments.

Mr. Amory: I would refer the hon. Member to the Answer my hon. and learned Friend, the Financial Secretary gave him on 18th November.

Mr. Barter: Is my right hon. Friend aware that the figures apparently were not available at that time but that every taxpayer is required to complete on his return of income and claimed allowances a note of the claim he makes in respect of ground rent payments by him? Cannot my right hon. Friend give an answer?

Mr. Amory: The difficulty is that the details asked for are not available, because the taxation of ground rent is not normally tied up with the Schedule A assessments in respect of which they are paid. It is the aggregation of information which is not possible without a very great deal of expenditure of time.

Mr. Barter: asked the Chancellor of the Exchequer to what extent claims for relief from Income Tax, Schedule A, by virtue of payments of ground rent by residential owner-occupiers, have been taken into account in his estimate of a net revenue of £34 millions from Income Tax, Schedule A, as applied to residential owner-occupiers.

Mr. Amory: Not at all.

Mr. Barter: Is my right hon. Friend aware that if Schedule A tax for owner-occupiers were abolished, the tax paid on ground rents could be deducted under another Schedule? Will he bear in mind that whereas window tax lasted for 155 years, this iniquitous tax will have lasted 156 years up to the date of his next Budget? Does not he feel that the time has come to do away with Schedule A tax?

Mr. Amory: I have taken note of what my hon. Friend says, but his supplementary question is rather hypothetical.

Mr. Awbery: asked the Chancellor of the Exchequer if he is aware that one of the deterrents to a man purchasing his own home is the fact that he has to pay Schedule A tax on the house which he occupies; and if he will now give consideration to the reduction or abolition of this tax.

Mr. Amory: The hon. Gentleman will not expect me to anticipate by Budget statement.

Mr. Awbery: Is the Chancellor aware that the Government have been advocating for a large number of years a property-owning democracy, inferring that we on this side of the House are opposed to people owning their own houses? Is he aware that this tax prevents people from purchasing their own houses, and that a man living in a house costing £3,000 has to pay 6s. 2d. a week as tax? Will he do something to relieve house owners; of this terrible burden?

Mr. Amory: I quite agree with the first part of the hon. Gentleman's supplementary question, and I will take note of what he said in the second part.

Salaries and Pensions

Dame Irene Ward: asked the Chancellor of the Exchequer whether he will name the groups for whom he has financial responsibility whose incomes from salaries and pensions are estimated, after allowing for the decreases in purchasing power and rises in the cost of living, to be equivalent to those payable in 1952, as is the case of people covered by the Pensions (Increase) Act and receiving pensions under the Royal Warrant.

Mr. Amory: I could not say without disproportionate expenditure of time whether the movements in salaries everywhere in this field since 1952 have maintained purchasing power at the 1952 level. As my hon. Friend well knows, the Pensions (Increase) Acts were intended to deal with cases of hardship and not to increase all public service pensions in proportion to the cost of living.

Dame Irene Ward: Will my right hon. Friend accept my services, and take it from me that there are no groups which are in the unfortunate position of those to whom I refer in my Question? Will he reconsider his decision and try to deal generously with those who have served the State well?

Mr. Amory: I will certainly accept my hon. Friend's services.

Dame Irene Ward: asked the Chancellor of the Exchequer if he will give an assurance that no action will be taken on


the Coleraine Committee's recommendations for increased remuneration for the higher civil servants, without a further Pensions Increase Act, the counting of unestablished service for pensions purposes and the increase of pensions under the Royal Warrant.

Mr. Amory: My hon. Friend will not expect me to give any such assurance.

Dame Irene Ward: Will my right hon. Friend bear in mind that senior civil servants, whose integrity and competence are unassailable, would prefer that their predecessors, who made possible their succession and who helped to build up our present Civil Service, should be generously treated, and that it would make succeeding civil servants much happier if the Treasury could behave as a good and generous employer should?

Mr. Amory: The Treasury does try, I think with success, to behave as a good and generous employer, and I will take note of what my hon. Friend has said.

Arts Council

Dame Irene Ward: asked the Chancellor of the Exchequer what reply he has sent to the letter of the hon. Member for Tynemouth relating to the Arts Council.

Mr. Amory: As far as I know, I have answered all my hon. Friend's letters. If she has any particular point perhaps she will write to me or raise it with my hon. and learned Friend the Financial Secretary to the Treasury, whom I understand she is seeing tomorrow.

Dame Irene Ward: Will my right hon. Friend agree that from my point of view his letters, when duly answered, have been most unsatisfactory? Can he explain to me—and this was the subject of my most recent letters—why a Government spokesman should give an entirely misleading account of the relationship between the Arts Council and the Carl Rosa? Does not he agree that that does not represent good government? I had always understood that Answers were straightforward and honourably given.

Mr. Amory: I am sorry about my letters to my hon. Friend. I must try to do better. However, I am sure that she would not wish that everything in those letters should be published in HANSARD.

Dame Irene Ward: I would love it.

Public Investment Programme (Steel Requirements)

Mr. Marquand: asked the Chancellor of the Exchequer his estimates of the quantities of steel which will be required for the fulfilment of investment programmes in the public sector in each quarter of the year 1959.

Mr. Amory: It is estimated that the 1959 public investment programme will require very roughly 2¼ million tons of finished steel. I regret that estimates of the amount needed in each quarter of 1959 are not available.

Mr. Marquand: Can the right hon. Gentleman tell the House what increase that figure represents over the past year, and how much of the slack in the steel industry, now resulting in unemployment and unused capacity, he expects to take up by that increase?

Mr. Amory: I am afraid that it is very difficult to say. This is an estimate of what we believe will be about the take-up of steel in the public investment projects which will be carried out during the present year. I would say that the amount would be somewhat above last year's. The total of the programme is considerably in excess, of course, but I find it difficult to compute exactly the component of steel in the projects.

Mr. Marquand: Is not the right hon. Gentleman badly failing in his duty to the Iron and Steel Board? How can the Iron and Steel Board plan for an increased output of steel if the right hon. Gentleman cannot be more precise than this in his estimates?

Mr. Amory: I think that when the projects are seen, the Iron and Steel Board will be in a better position than I am to compute the component of steel.

Automation and Electronic Controls

Mr. Mikardo: asked the Chancellor of the Exchequer the approximate annual total of public funds now being spent on research on automation and electronic controls and related matters.

Mr. Amory: I would refer the hon. Member to the Answer given on 5th February by my hon. and learned Friend the Financial Secretary to the hon. Member for Gorton (Mr. Zilliacus). No useful


estimate of the total of Government expenditure over this wide field can be made.

Mr. Mikardo: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that we are unfortunately falling behind some other countries which are our competitors in this matter? Does he not know that whereas almost all the transfer machines at present being installed in British factories are being imported, our biggest transfer manufacturer has just laid off half his staff? Will he consult his right hon. Friends directly concerned with these matters to see whether something can be done to remedy this very grave situation?

Mr. Amory: I will take note of what the hon. Member has said. I could not agree with him more about the importance of this aspect of industrial development. It is something of the utmost importance to this country.

Anglo-Egyptian Agreement

Mr. E. Johnson: asked the Chancellor of the Exchequer what steps he is taking to ensure that British businessmen receive adequate compensation for damage done to their sequestrated businesses and property in Egypt; and if Her Majesty's Government will refrain from releasing any of Egypt's sterling balances now frozen in London until they are satisfied that all British subjects who resided in, or owned property in, Egypt have been fairly treated.

Mr. Amory: I would ask my hon. Friend to await the terms of the proposed agreement which will be published as soon as it has been signed.

Mr. Johnson: Has my right hon. Friend's attention been drawn to the experience of the French community in Egypt who were swindled right, centre and left by the Egyptians? Has he had his attention drawn to the statement made by the Chairman of the British Community's Association which suggests that the same thing may happen to British subjects? Will he at least make full use of the bargaining counter of the blocked sterling balances to gain fair treatment for our fellow citizens?

Mr. Amory: I hope to make a full statement on this matter in the event of an agreement being signed.

Mr. H. Wilson: Will the right hon. Gentleman say whether the agreement is on the whole fair, having regard to our anxieties and concern in the matter, and will he say whether the Government have been over-generous to the Egyptians on the ground that the Government now regard President Nasser as our best ally against Communism in the Middle East?

Mr. Amory: I hope that the right hon. Gentleman will wait until the agreement is signed, as I hope, when I shall make a statement to the House.

Mr. Gresham Cooke: asked the Chancellor of the Exchequer if he is now in a position to make a further statement to the House on the results of the visit of the President of the World Bank to Colonel Nasser to negotiate in regard to British interests in Egypt.

Mr. Amory: I regret that I am not yet able to add to the reply which I gave to the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Huyton (Mr. H. Wilson) and other hon. Members on 17th February.

Mr. Gresham Cooke: Is my right hon. Friend aware that if the compensation terms are fair many people in this country would like there to be a financial settlement so that more trade can be done with Egypt, especially in view of the fact that Western Germany has been making inroads into British trade in the last few months?

Mr. Amory: I certainly share my hon. Friend's views that a satisfactory financial settlement would be a great advantage, and I hope that we shall get one.

Mr. H. Wilson: Will the Chancellor say whether it is or is not a fact that in this agreement the Government are, in effect, paying between £50 million and £100 million compensation for damage done at Suez, because of the fact that they have failed to press for compensation for the stores and installations taken over by the Egyptians from the Suez base?

Mr. Amory: I think that, once again, I must ask the right hon. Gentleman to await the statement that will be made if and when the agreement is signed.

Psychiatrists (Income Tax Allowances)

Mr. K. Robinson: asked the Chancellor of the Exchequer why, under his


regulations, when a psychiatrist undergoes a training analysis for the purpose of increasing his therapeutic skill, no part of the cost of such an analysis is allowed by the Inland Revenue authorities as a deduction from income for Income Tax purposes.

Mr. Amory: If, as I assume, the hon. Member's Question relates to psychiatrists in salaried employment assessed under Schedule E, the cost of personal analysis is not regarded as satisfying the test laid down by law, which is that expenses are deductible only if incurred wholly, exclusively and necessarily in the performance of the duties of the employment.

Mr. Robinson: Is the Chancellor aware that the purpose of this analysis is solely to make a man a better doctor? Is he aware that many younger psychiatrists are spending as much as £500 a year—perhaps one-third of their gross salary—on these courses in the interests of their patients? Will he have discussions with his right hon. and learned Friend the Minister of Health to see whether some steps can be taken towards remedying this gross injustice?

Mr. Amory: I do not disagree with what the hon. Member has said about the importance of this training, but as he knows, the test in the case of employed persons under Schedule E is very strict, and these courses, deserving as they are, do not seem to amount to an essential qualification for employment.

Income Tax (Allowances)

Mr. Zilliacus: asked the Chancellor of the Exchequer whether he will take steps to equate the financial position of 18–19 year old youths taking a sandwich course in the engineering industry leading to a technical diploma, who pay tax on their incomes and whose parents are not entitled to child allowances, with the financial position of university students, whose parents benefit by the child allowances and who do not pay Income Tax on their maintenance and vacation grants or on their vacation earnings.

Mr. Amory: I have noted the hon. Member's suggestion.

Mr. Zilliacus: While appreciating that the Chancellor cannot anticipate his Budget Statement, may I ask him if it is not a fact that the sandwich course is a

new thing to encourage the development of technicians? Would he look at the question of giving further financial inducements and encouragement to increase the incentive to take these courses?

Mr. Amory: I agree with the hon. Gentleman that sandwich courses are very important indeed, and I will take note of his suggestion.

Mr. W. R. Williams: Has the Chancellor sympathetically noted what my hon. Friend 'has said, because of the importance of this matter in this new era?

Mr. Amory: I have sympathetically noted the hon. Gentleman's supplementary question, anyhow.

Merchanting Trade (East Germany)

Mr. Rankin: asked the Chancellor of the Exchequer if he will state the value of the goods bought in 1958 by East Germany, through London, but which did not touch any British port.

Mr. Amory: I regret that the value of this merchanting trade in 1958 is not known.

Mr. Rankin: The Chancellor agrees, I take it, that this trade does exist? Would he agree that it is trade that ought to be discouraged, and, as far as possible, should be discouraged by him, in view of the fact that it makes no impact on employment in this country, particularly in view of the great need to get more jobs for unemployed people?

Mr. Amory: No. I do not think I can agree with the hon. Gentleman in the view which he has expressed, which appears to me to be a rather narrow view regarding trade.

Cinemas (Entertainments Duty)

Mr. Rankin: asked the Chancellor of the Exchequer what reply he sent to the invitation to meet Sir Alec Guinness and certain other film stars last Wednesday to hear representations about the entertainments tax.

Mr. Amory: I received a notice of the meeting and it was acknowledged.

Mr. Rankin: Would not the Chancellor agree that on this occasion a little Guinness would have done him good?


Would he now agree to return the compliment and say that he will be good for Guinness and the British public by saying that he will abolish the cinema tax?

Mr. Amory: I receive few invitations to meet film stars and normally this invitation would have been something I should have welcomed. But it contained these words:
You yourself no doubt will be unable to be present.
In those circumstances, I left it to the representatives of the trade to make representations to hon. Members who, no doubt, will make representations to me.

Durham (Government Office)

Mr. Grey: asked the Secretary to the Treasury if he will make a statement con cerning the transfer of a Government Department to Durham.

The Financial Secretary to the Treasury (Mr. J. E. S. Simon): I am not yet in a position to make a statement, but I am continuing to make efforts to find a suitable Government office for transfer to Durham.

Mr. Grey: When will the Government make up their mind about this matter? It has been considered for the past six or seven years, which is a long time. May I ask the hon. and learned Gentleman to bear in mind that the city council and the county council are anxious that the Minister should determine what Department is coming to Durham and that a speedy decision should be made?

Mr. Simon: Both on the wider grounds, and as a political neighbour of the hon. Gentleman in the North-East, I sympathise with the view he has advanced. On the other hand, we must carefully consider the interests of the public service and particularly the interests and convenience of the staff for whom we are responsible.

Mr. Grey: In view of the unsatisfactory nature of that reply, I beg to give notice that I shall endeavour to raise the matter on the Adjournment as soon as possible.

Iron and Steel Holding and Realisation Agency

Mr. Bence: asked the Secretary to the Treasury what percentage of out-

standing debenture, unsecured loan, and preference stock in the Steel Company of Wales is held by the Iron and Steel Holding and Realisation Agency; and the average rate of interest.

The Economic Secretary to the Treasury (Mr. F. J. Erroll): All the debenture stock in the Steel Company of Wales, Limited, is held by the Iron and Steel Holding and Realisation Agency. The average rate of interest is 5⅝ per cent. The company has no unsecured loan or preference stock.

Mr. Bence: As the public, or the taxpayers, seem to own the whole of this plant, would not it be justifiable that the Agency should also get the equity stock, so that in addition to financing the job the taxpayers may have the profits?

Mr. Erroll: The Agency holds the prior charges and the investment public holds the ordinary shares, which seems a satisfactory arrangement. [HON. MEMBERS: "Oh."]

Mr. Bence: asked the Secretary to the Treasury what percentage of outstanding debenture, unsecured loan, and preference stock in Stewarts and Lloyds, Limited, is held by the Iron and Steel Holding and Realisation Agency; and the average rate of interest.

Mr. Erroll: All the preference shares and unsecured loan stock in Stewarts and Lloyds, Limited, are held by the Iron and Steel Holding and Realisation Agency. The average rate of interest is 5 per cent. The company has no debentures

Mr. Bence: Is not the hon. Gentleman aware that there are many people who feel that it is not cricket when private companies use resources provided entirely by the taxpayer, and the profitability arising from those resources, to attack the public when it is suggested that the public may have the equity stock as well?

Mr. Erroll: That is another question, but I would point out to the hon. Gentleman that ownership of ordinary shares makes one eligible to share the losses as well as the profits.

Mr. Jay: Are we to understand from the earlier answer given by the Economic


Secretary that the Government have no intention of selling any of the debenture stock still held in the iron and steel industry?

Mr. Erroll: I should not like to say anything about the Government's intentions in this matter at the present time.

Mr. H. Morrison: Can the hon. Gentleman tell the House what is the dividend on the equity or ordinary shares of this concern as compared with the 5 per cent. on the Government investment, and if it is more than the Government investment, why are the taxpayers left holding the sticky end of the stick?

Mr. Erroll: The advantage to a prior charge holder is, of course, that he receives the interest in good years and bad. Equity holders get a dividend in good years but nothing in bad years. I have not the figures for which the right hon. Gentleman asked but I shall be glad to send them to him, if he wishes.

Mr. Bence: asked the Secretary to the Treasury what percentage of outstanding debenture, unsecured loan, and preference stock in Colvilles, Limited, is held by the Iron and Steel Holding and Realisation Agency; and the average rate of interest thereon.

Mr. Erroll: All the preference share in Colvilles, Limited, are held by the Iron and Steel Holding and Realisation Agency; 62½ per cent. of the debenture stock is held by the Agency. The average rate of interest is 5 per cent. The company has no unsecured loan stock.

Mr. Bence: Does not the hon. Gentleman appreciate that, with his usual canniness, the Scot is not prepared to finance this privately-owned concern—as is obvious from the figures which the hon. Gentleman has given to us—because he is afraid that most of his money will be thrown away on Tory propaganda?

Mr. Erroll: The fact is that after reorganisation no less than 10 million shares of a nominal value of £1 were sold to the public at a price of 26s. a share, which shows that the public were prepared to invest in this excellent company.

Mr. Gower: Is not it much more likely that the ordinary canny Scot, like other people in the British Isles, is more

deterred by the Labour Party's threat to renationalise the industry?

Mr. Erroll: I agree with my hon. Friend. If the Labour Party would drop its renationalisation proposals, it would be a great help to the British iron and steel industry.

Mr. Mikardo: Will the hon. Gentleman say what capital gains have been made by the holders of the equity capital in this company since denationalisation?

Mr. Erroll: That is another question, and I will not attempt to answer it today.

Mr. H. Wilson: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. May I draw your attention to the fact that today is the first day on which the Chancellor of the Exchequer has answered Questions in this House since 9th December, and on present form we shall not get Answers from him again until 21st April? In view of our right and duty to keep a Parliamentary control on finance, may I ask you, Mr. Speaker, to bear this in mind next time consideration is given to the rearrangement of Questions, so that the Chancellor may be available to the House more often than once every eight or ten weeks?

Mr. Speaker: That is not a matter for me, but no doubt what the right hon. Gentleman has said will receive consideration in the proper quarters.

Oral Answers to Questions — LOCAL GOVERNMENT

Thames Valley (Movable Flood Barrier)

Mr. Dodds: asked the Minister of Housing and Local Government and Minister for Welsh Affairs what progress has been made in the proposal to construct a movable flood barrier designed to prevent flooding in the Thames Valley and a repetition of the disastrous floods of 1953.

Mr. Braine: asked the Minister of Housing and Local Government and Minister for Welsh Affairs whether he now has any statement to make regarding the proposal for a Thames barrage scheme made by the Waverley Committee after the 1953 flood disaster.

Sir F. Medlicott: asked the Minister of Housing and Local Government and


Minister for Welsh Affairs what progress is being made in the study of the proposal for a Thames barrage scheme as recommended by the Waverley Committee.

The Minister of Housing and Local Government and Minister for Welsh Affairs (Mr. Henry Brooke): Following consideration of the recommendations made by the Waverley Committee on Coastal Flooding, two firms of consulting engineers were appointed to prepare a report on the practicability, design and estimated cost of constructing a movable flood barrier at a suitable point on the River Thames. These two firms have reported to me, and I am arranging to publish as soon as possible a summary of their views and conclusions. In the meantime I am considering their findings, in consultation with several of my right hon. Friends who are also concerned. Difficult and complicated questions are at issue here, but I am keenly aware of the importance of the matter and the need to reach some decision, and I will make a further statement as soon as I can.

Mr. Dodds: I thank the right hon. Gentleman for that statement. As there is so much interest in this matter, will he say whether he is pleased with what has been put before him? Does he think that it contains any hope for the future?

Mr. Brooke: I have received these two important reports from the firms of consulting engineers. I think that my right course now is to put them into a convenient form which would be not quite so lengthy and technical as are the original reports, so that the public and all interested bodies may be able to judge them.

Mr. Braine: Is my right hon. Friend aware that the Waverley Committee recommended in May, 1954, that the feasibility of the scheme should be examined at an early date? Can he speed up any publication, because a great deal of water has passed under London Bridge since then and fears of these dangers still exist in the Thames area?

Mr. Brooke: I hope that my Answer will give general satisfaction. I have received these reports and I am proposing to publish summaries of them as soon as I can.

Smokeless Zones

Mr. Dodds: asked the Minister of Housing and Local Government and Minister for Welsh Affairs, in connection with the designating of smokeless zones, what action his Department takes, before he confirms smoke control area orders, to ensure that there will be available adequate supplies of the suitable types of fuel necessary to give satisfactory results in modern domestic solid fuel appliances.

The Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Housing and Local Government (Mr. J. R. Bevins): The estimated fuel requirements for every proposed smoke control area are considered by the appropriate regional advisory committee on smokeless fuels, which reports to my noble Friend the Minister of Power about the prospects of supply of suitable fuels to meet these requirements. My noble Friend advises on the basis of these reports before my right hon. Friend decides whether to confirm any Smoke Control Order.

Mr. Dodds: In view of all the care that is taken, will the Minister explain why, when there are plenty of stocks of smokeless fuel, there is so much dissatisfaction that it does not seem to burn in any of the appliances that are available? What is done to see that one matches up with the other?

Mr. Bevins: My advice is that there are ample supplies of suitable coke throughout the country and that there are, in the smoke control areas, on the whole, sufficient supplies of premium fuels as well. Advice to householders on suitable appliances is primarily a matter for the local authority.

Private Street Works

Mr. Braine: asked the Minister of House and Local Government and Minister of Welsh Affairs if he is aware that, notwithstanding the powers of discretion already possessed by local authorities, hardship is still caused to many frontagers who are unable to meet their share of the cost of making up private streets; and whether he will set up a Departmental Committee to investigate the extent of the problem and to make recommendations.

Sir F. Medlicott: asked the Minister of Housing and Local Government and Minister for Welsh Affairs if he is aware of the difficulty experienced by many house-owners who are unable to meet the cost of making up private streets owing to the present high cost of such work; and what progress he has made in his examination of the possibility of providing some amelioration of the financial burden falling on such owners.

Mr. Bevins: As a result of an examination of the cases which have recently come before him on appeal, my right hon. Friend has decided to put in hand a broader survey of the working of the arrangements for the making-up of private streets. When this survey is completed we shall consider what further action may be necessary.

Mr. Braine: May I warmly congratulate the Minister upon having taken that decision? Could my hon. Friend indicate when the Committee might report? I have constituents who derive no degree of benefit from flank road work but are required to pay charges of £700 or £800, when they cannot possibly do so.

Mr. Bevins: What we have done so far has been to carry out examination of the appeals sent to the Ministry, but they give only part of the picture. We shall send to local authorities for further information and when we have it we shall consider an Amendment of the law.

Sir F. Medlicott: Is my hon. Friend aware that postponement of making up these streets necessitates work being done in some cases at two or three times the price that it would have cost before the war? As there are hundreds of these streets in Norwich and Norfolk, is my hon. Friend aware that his decision will be very much appreciated?

Mr. Bevins: We took that into consideration.

Mr. Awbery: Is not this another addition to the cost of purchasing one's own house? Seeing that the road is used by the community at large, would not the hon. Gentleman arrange for the making-up of the road to be the responsibility of the local authority or of the national Exchequer?

Mr. Bevins: That is a very much wider question.

Mr. Gower: asked the Minister of Housing and Local Government and Minister for Welsh Affairs (1) how many unmade private roads there were in Glamorgan and in the area of Cardiff Rural District Council, respectively, at the end of 1951; how many of these roads are still unmade; and what steps he is taking to avoid further hardship to the people affected by the condition of many of these streets;
(2) if he will take steps to ensure that all unmade private streets in the area of the Cardiff Rural District Council shall be made up and completed together with pavements and footways within the next 12 months; and if he will make a statement.

Mr. H. Brooke: I have no information about the number of unmade private roads in any area. I think it could be obtained directly from the local authority concerned. I have no power to direct any local authority to carry out private street works, but I am prepared to give the Glamorgan County Council consent to borrow money for making up streets in the Cardiff rural district which are in bad repair, should they wish me to do so.

Mr. Gower: As my right hon. Friend has announced the new policy with regard to unmade private roads, would not it be of great assistance if he had information about the number of unmade roads in the area of each local authority in the United Kingdom?

Mr. Brooke: It is for the local authority to take the initiative, and, as I have explained to my hon. Friend, I have no power to compel local authorities to take action. Not having that power, it would not be of great assistance to me in carrying out my Departmental duties to collect a lot of information.

Mr. Gower: asked the Minister of Housing and Local Government and Minister for Welsh Affairs what increase he will sanction, and at what cost, in the making-up of private roads and streets in England and Wales, respectively, during the next year; and if he will make a statement.

Mr. H. Brooke: It is not possible at this stage to say what the extent of the authorisations will be during the coming year, because the initiative rests with the local authorities. They are responsible for formulating proposals.

Mr. Swingler: asked the Minister of Housing and Local Government and the Minister for Welsh Affairs the reasons for the delay in giving loan sanction to Newcastle-under-Lyme Borough Council for private street works in Parkside Avenue and Woolliscroft Avenue, for which application was made on 19th January, and for Leamington Gardens, for which application was made on 27th January.

Mr. Bevins: There was no delay in dealing with these applications. The council was told on 20th February that loan sanction would be issued.

Mr. Swingler: While thanking the Parliamentary Secretary for the fact that the council received permission yesterday, may I ask why it took a month for the loan sanction to be given? Did not the Ministry send a circular saying that it wanted the council to go ahead with this work? Why should it take four or five weeks for the Minister to give approval?

Mr. Bevins: It took that period because the local authority omitted to give all the information it should have given.

Mr. Swingler: asked the Minister of Housing and Local Government and Minister for Welsh Affairs why it took his Department from 12th December, 1958, to 4th February, 1959, to give loan sanction to the Newcastle-under-Lyme Borough Council in respect of private street works for Sparch Avenue and Fairfield Avenue.

Mr. Bevins: It was necessary to ask the local authority for additional information, which was received on 6th January. The council was informed on 22nd January that loan sanction would be given.

Mr. Swingler: As the Minister sent an inspector to Newcastle-under-Lyme who went into the whole problem of private street works and inspected many of the private streets, why did the Minister create difficulties by asking unnecessary questions of the council when representatives of the Ministry had been on the spot?

Mr. Bevins: The hon. Member is being unnecessarily churlish. The local authority omitted to give the information it ought to have given and further information was asked for on 22nd December, ten days after the first application was

received. Loan sanction was promised 16 days later.

Mr. Swingler: asked the Minister of Housing and Local Government and Minister for Welsh Affairs if he will speed up the sanctioning of loans to local authorities for private street works.

Mr. Bevins: No, Sir.

Mr. Swingler: Will the Parliamentary Secretary himself stop being churlish and have a look into this question? Is not it a fact that repeatedly over many years I have raised with the Department cases of unmade roads and the details have been investigated on several occasions on the spot by Ministry inspectors? Why, therefore, is it necessary to have so many questions and answers between the Ministry and the council? Cannot the Government put any faith in a local authority which knows its own business?

Mr. Bevins: All these applications have to be looked at technically and it often is necessary to ask the local authority for further information. We are dealing with 400 to 500 applications a year and the average time taken to dispose of them is less than one: month.

Slum Clearance Orders (Compensation)

Mr. Braine: asked the Minister of Housing and Local Government and Minister for Welsh Affairs what consideration he has given to the reissue of the circular which his predecessor sent to local housing authorities in 1956 instructing them that in considering compensation for the demolition under slum clearance orders of premises held under a weekly tenancy local authorities should have regard to what the compensation might be if such tenancies were leasehold.

Mr. H. Brooke: My hon. Friend is no doubt referring to the advice given in paragraph 6 of Circular 43, which my predecessor sent to local authorities in 1956. This Circular remains in force and local authorities should continue to be guided by it.

Mr. Braine: Is my right hon. Friend aware that there have been distressing cases mentioned in the Press at Barking in Essex and Atherstone in Warwickshire? Is he aware that elderly widows have been turned out without compensation at all? It is clear that the terms of


the Circular were ignored in those cases. Does not my right hon. Friend think that the attention of such authorities should be drawn again to the existence of the Circular?

Mr. Brooke: This is within the discretionary power of the local authorities, but I will bear in mind what my hon. Friend has said. Meanwhile, his Question will have served to direct attention to the fact that the Circular still operates.

Dartmoor National Park (Buckland Woods)

Mr. Hayman: asked the Minister of Housing and Local Government and Minister for Welsh Affairs whether he will arrange for a public inquiry into the proposal to fell Buckland Woods, in the Dartmoor National Park.

Mr. H. Brooke: As the hon. Member is aware, discussions are taking place between the National Parks Commission, the Forestry Commission and my Department, and meanwhile I am not in a position to make a statement.

Mr. Hayman: Will the Minister take account of the fact that there is considerable concern at the proposal to clear-fell Buckland Woods, which are very beautiful and in a National Park, and that it is hoped that he will not support any proposal which would sacrifice beauty to economic expediency?

Mr. Brooke: I know there are strong feelings held about this matter. That is why there was a preliminary discussion between the bodies I mentioned a fortnight ago. I understand that a further meeting is to be held on the site.

Welsh Books (Grant)

Mr. Idwal Jones: asked the Minister of Housing and Local Government and Minister for Welsh Affairs whether he will propose an increase in the present grant of £1,000 given to support the publication of Welsh books; and if he will make a statement.

Mr. H. Brooke: It is not only the publishing of books in Welsh but the buying and reading of them that is important. I have arranged for discussions to be held with the University of Wales Press Board and the Union of Welsh Publishers and Booksellers, but

I am not yet in a position to make a statement.

Mr. Idwal Jones: Is the Minister aware that certain hon. Members on this side of the House do not fully understand his attitude to the reading of Welsh books? If the grant were increased the price of Welsh books could be reduced and a larger market created among Welsh readers.

Mr. Brooke: The matter is rather more complicated than that. I attach a great deal of importance to this question. I realise how significant it is for the future of the Welsh language which, as a Conservative, I want to help to conserve.

Mr. Mikardo: Can the right hon. Gentleman tell us how many books in Welsh have been purchased and read by the Minister for Welsh Affairs?

Mr. Brooke: I find the language a very difficult one to learn.

Land, Derbyshire (Opencast Coal Working)

Mr. Champion: asked the Minister of Housing and Local Government and Minister for Welsh Affairs whether he is aware that the land at Derby Road, Stanley, in respect of which the Derbyshire County Council refused planning permission for opencast coal working to Messrs. Power (Somercotes) Ltd., is good agricultural land and that the local colliery is threatened with closure; to what extent he took account of these facts in considering the appeal against the council's decision; and why, in view of the high proportion of land in Derbyshire already affected by opencast operations, he allowed the appeal.

Mr. Bevins: This site is 17 acres of rough pasture already affected by past mineral dereliction. After taking account of all available information, my right hon. Friend allowed the appeal because he could see no sufficient objection to opencast working on this land. I am sending to the hon. Member a copy of the letter giving my right hon. Friend's decision.

Mr. Champion: Does the Parliamentary Secretary agree that the reply given to Derbyshire County Council allowing the appeal was a very dusty one indeed—as dusty as an opencast coal site itself? Having regard to the fact that Derbyshire


has already suffered too much in this way, will he think again about the whole matter?

Mr. Bevins: I do not agree that the decision was dusty, either in substance or in terms. All my right hon. Friend had to consider was an appeal against planning refusal and there were simply not sufficient objections on planning grounds to the proposal. The question whether the site should be now worked is a matter for the National Coal Board.

Oral Answers to Questions — HOUSING

Building Societies (Mortgages)

Miss Burton: asked the Minister of Housing and Local Government and Minister for Welsh Affairs whether he is now in a position to make a statement concerning his discussions with the Building Societies Association on the discrimination made between men and women applicants for mortgages.

Mr. H. Brooke: With permission, I will answer this Question and Question No. 29 together.

Miss Burton: On a point of order. These two Questions are quite different and I submit, with the greatest respect —I am not being difficult—that you will see, Mr. Speaker, on reflection, that I must withhold my permission to these replies being answered together.

Mr. Speaker: According to previous Rulings, I suggest that the hon. Lady might wait for the Answer, which might conceivably deal with both points, although she does not seem to be of that view at the moment.

Miss Burton: You are the only hope of the back bencher in a matter like this, Mr. Speaker. The Answer will not be applicable to both Questions, because the second one raises an entirely different matter from the first. I have a supplementary question which I wish to put on the first Question. If the Questions are answered together, will you allow me to put a supplementary question on each aspect?

Mr. Speaker: The hon. Lady will appreciate that I have not heard the Answer and I have no idea what it is. When I have heard the Answer I will be able to deal with the hon. Lady's point.

Mr. J. Hynd: Further to that point of order. May I ask what is meant by the preamble used by the Minister, when he asks for permission to answer both Questions together? With the permission of whom?

Mr. Speaker: It is a courteous phrase, to which I have no reason to object. It is reasonable that one should listen to the Answer before one forms one's opinion about it. Mr. Brooke.

Miss Burton: I am really not an awkward person, so far as you are concerned, Mr. Speaker, but I do withhold this permission. The Questions are not related at all, so I ask you to allow on this occasion each Question to be answered separately.

Mr. Brooke: I am always ready to please a lady, if I can. I will gladly read out the first paragraph of my Answer, in answer to the hon. Lady's first Question, and the second paragraph in reply to her second Question. The reply to the first Question therefore is:
Representatives of the Building Societies Association have suggested—and I welcome this—that the agreement to be signed by building societies before they may receive Government money should provide that mortgages will be granted under the scheme without distinction of sex. All societies participating in the scheme will be required to sign the same agreement, whether or not they are members of the Building Societies Association.

Miss Burton: That sounds very agreeable. May I ask the right hon. Gentleman whether that is anything different from what we had before? Is he aware that the building societies issued a statement recently which received great publicity, saying that a male guarantor would not be required and had not been required in the past? Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that that statement is flagrantly untrue? I say that deliberately. Does the right hon. Gentleman not agree that to say that something does not exist which has been proved is not even intelligent? Would the right hon. Gentleman let us know whether he proposes to agree to the Amendment that we put down recently on the Committee stage of the Bill, or whether the Building Societies Association is merely trying, under the


cloak of another reply, to get out of committing itself?

Mr. Brooke: No, Sir. I advised the Committee to reject the Amendment, which would make trustee status for building societies dependent on whether or not they ask for male guarantors for women applicants. I have fulfilled the undertaking I gave to the House to have further discussion with the Building Societies Association and, as the result of that, the Association has suggested that the agreement which building societies participating in the scheme shall sign shall provide that mortgages will be granted under the scheme without discrimination Of sex. I thought that was exactly what the hon. Lady wanted.

Mr. Mitchison: What will happen to a building society which does not adhere to the undertaking?

Mr. Brooke: I would refer the hon. and learned Member to the terms of the Bill.

Mr. Mitchison: The Bill does not mention the scheme or say anything about it. Can the right hon. Gentleman tell us what will happen to a building society if it does not keep to the undertaking?

Mr. Brooke: That goes beyond the scope of the Question.

Miss Burton: asked the Minister of Housing and Local Government and Minister for Welsh Affairs which societies, outside the Building Societies Association, are eligible to participate in the Government loan scheme of mortgage lendings; to what extent conditions applying to members of the Building Societies Association will be relevant in their case; and if he will make a statement.

Mr. H. Brooke: I cannot say whether a society will be eligible to participate in the scheme until it has been designated by the Chief Registrar of Friendly Societies, under what is now Clause I of the House Purchase and Housing Bill.

Miss Burton: Is the right hon. Gentleman prepared to say whether the Halifax Building Society will not be able to take part in this scheme because it does not belong to the Association? Is he aware that I asked this Question because I have had more complaints about the Halifax

and its sex discrimination than about any other building society and that the complaints condemn the practice that it is carrying out?

Mr. Brooke: I specified my views during the Committee stage of the Bill. I am not told in advance whether the Halifax or any other particular building society will wish to sign an agreement of the kind indicated. That depends in the first instance obviously on the society.

Council House Tenants (Income Limits)

Mr. Prentice: asked the Minister of Housing and Local Government and Minister for Welsh Affairs what recent guidance or advice he has given to local authorities on the maximum income limits permissible for families occupying or wishing to occupy council housing.

Mr. H. Brooke: None, Sir. The general management and control of a local authority's houses is, by law, a matter for the authority itself.

Mr. Prentice: Is the Minister aware of the great deal of worry and distress which has been caused among council tenants in Croydon by the policy of that council in threatening to evict families Where the joint income of a man and his wife is more than £20 a week and to refuse new tenancies where the joint income is more than £15 a week? Do not the powers of the Minister extend to giving some guidance to councils to prevent them doing this sort of thing? Is he aware that people who have been in a home for 20 or 30 years may lose it and that there are others who cannot get mortgages or obtain homes otherwise and will be refused permission to go on council estates? Can he discourage local authorities from following crazy and reactionary policies of this kind?

Mr. Brooke: I have frequently expressed my view that the most fruitful approach to this problem is made by local authorities adopting a system of differential rents.

Vice-Admiral Hughes Hallett: Is not it quite wrong for the policy of any local authority, that of Croydon or any other, to be condemned in this House without seeing how that policy is applied?

Mr. Mitchison: Does not the right hon. Gentleman agree that whatever the merits or demerits of differential rents, they serve the exact opposite of what Croydon is doing, as Croydon Council is turning people out?

Mr. Brooke: I think the wise councils are those which adopt systems of differential rents. I am sorry to find that there are still a considerable number of local authorities which are not enlightened enough to do that.

Subsidies

Mr. Blenkinsop: asked the Minister of Housing and Local Government and Minister for Welsh Affairs whether he will restore housing subsidies for houses built for general need by local authorities in areas where there is severe unemployment amongst building trade workers.

Mr. H. Brooke: No, Sir, but I am willing to consider requests to build more houses from local authorities in such areas.

Mr. Blenkinsop: Is the right hon. Gentleman willing to consider a request from Newcastle Council, which is disturbed at his cutting down of the allocation of houses? Will he particularly bear in mind the very large number of building trade workers who have been out of work now for some considerable time and who could be usefully employed in building houses for general need?

Mr. Brooke: Yes, I am quite willing to agree to Newcastle-upon-Tyne building more houses than were built there last year. I understand that the council has put in an application to build something like 50 per cent. more. It is perhaps open to question whether it will succeed.

Mr. Mitchison: In the interests of economy, does not the right hon. Gentleman think that the Government might save more money by restoring housing subsidies than by having to pay unemployment benefit to building workers?

Mr. Brooke: No, Sir, I think there are few local authorities which could not afford to build houses without subsidy provided they adopt a proper system of pooling rents.

NUCLEAR WEAPONS

Mr. Hector Hughes: asked the Prime Minister what reply he has sent, or intends to send, to the letter to him from the Secretary of Mastrick Congregational Church, Aberdeen, enclosing a resolution passed unanimously at its church meeting on 26th January, 1959, urging Her Majesty's Government to take, in relation to nuclear weapons, certain steps in co-operation with other Powers.

The Secretary of State for the Home Department and Lord Privy Seal (Mr. R. A. Butler): I have been asked to reply.
The letter has been acknowledged and the Secretary informed that the terms of the resolution have been noted.

Mr. Hughes: Does the Leader of the House realise that the resolution was a reasoned, constructive and polite one which deserved a reply on a similar plane? The resolution was dated 26th January; is not it time that a reply was sent?

Mr. Butler: The acknowledgment which was sent seemed to me to be in courteous terms. I agree that the resolution—of which I have a copy here—is a comprehensive and constructive one, as indeed it should be in dealing with such a very large subject as this, one of such importance to the world, in the middle of an important and serious negotiation.

QUESTIONS TO MINISTERS

Mr. G. R. Strauss: Mr. Speaker, I wish to raise a point of order. It is whether it is possible for you or for the House to take any action to prevent Ministers transferring Questions to other Ministers in cases where the Minister to whom the Question was first addressed is obviously a responsible Minister who should reply to the House.
I base my request to you on an incident that occurred today. I wish to refer you to Question No. 83, which I addressed to the Chancellor of the Exchequer. He has transferred it in the meanwhile to the Paymaster-General. I originally asked the Chancellor:
what inquiries he made as to whether the building of the new strip mill at Colvilles had received the approval of the Iron and Steel


Board before he authorised the loan to the company of £50 million for this purpose.
I submit that the Chancellor should answer that Question, for two reasons. First, he is the Minister who was responsible for authorising the loan and he could make, and he should have made, inquiries to see whether the duties of the statutory body set up for this very purpose had, in fact, been carried out by that body.
The importance of the matter arises from the fact that, according to the Economist of 14th February, Sir Andrew McCance, who is the Chairman of Colvilles, denied that the matter had ever been before the Iron and Steel Board. According to the Economist, Sir Andrew McCance said:
He made one interesting disclosure: that the project has not yet been submitted to the British Iron and Steel Federation and the Iron and Steel Board for their 'consideration and approval'.
Mr. Speaker, I submit that the Chancellor of the Exchequer, who granted the loan, should have inquired whether the Board had, in fact, investigated the matter and given its consent, as, indeed, it must according to the Act of Parliament. Moreover, there is no reason why the Chancellor of the Exchequer should not have stated that he had made inquiries from the Minister of Power, or that he had made inquiries direct from the Board, or that he had made no inquiries at all. I submit to you, Mr. Speaker, that on this, as on many other occasions, the Minister responsible should be expected to reply and not to pass the Question over to another Minister who has a minor responsibility in the matter.

Mr. Speaker: I must repeat what I have frequently said in the past, that I have no control over this matter. The question of Ministerial responsibility is one for Ministers themselves. I suppose that, in theory, all Ministerial actions are actions of the Government as a whole. The question of responsibility is Departmental in that sense, namely, that they are Departments of the Government and which Minister is judged by Ministers to be the proper one to answer a Question is certainly not a matter for me. The only advice I can give to the right hon. Member for Vauxhall (Mr. G. R. Strauss) is to wait and see what answer he gets from the Paymaster-General. It may 'be that

that will resolve the point which is troubling him. If it does not, no doubt he can seek another opportunity of returning to the matter.

Mr. Strauss: Further to that point of order, Mr. Speaker, may I draw your attention to the fact that the Chancellor of the Exchequer—

Sir K. Pickthorn: On a point of order—

Mr. Speaker: I am already dealing with a point of order.

Sir K. Pickthorn: You indicated it was not a point of order, Sir.

Mr. Speaker: The right hon. Gentleman used the introductory words. "Further to that point of order".

Sir K. Pickthorn: Further to what was not a point of order?

Mr. Strauss: Further to that point of order. I appreciate your difficulty in the matter, Mr. Speaker, but it is a fact that the Chancellor today answered a detailed Question about the amount of steel required this year. That was Question No. 7.
May I point out the difficulties in which Members of the Opposition are placed in a case such as this where the Paymaster-General does not come before the House for questioning until after Easter? It is so important, so that we can find out the truth of the matter, to cross-examine the Ministers concerned and find out exactly where the truth lies. By the action which has been taken I am unable to do it.

Mr. Speaker: I repeat what I have said before, namely, that a Written Answer will no doubt reach the right hon. Member in the course of this afternoon. It may resolve his doubts. It may not. I can only advise him, if it does not, to use some other proper means of dealing with it.

Mr. S. Silverman: Further to that point of order, Mr. Speaker. May I ask whether there is or is not a distinction to be drawn between two different kinds of Ministerial responsibility? Normally, in Questions on the Order Paper the responsibility of a particular Minister is a matter of convenience in the Government itself as between one Minister and another. Nobody has ever objected,


when a Question has been put down to one Minister, to that Minister handing it over to someone whose Departmental responsibility may be more apposite. There is another kind of Ministerial responsibility, is there not, where, by Statute, the responsibility in a particular matter is squarely placed on the shoulders of a particular Minister? Where that kind of responsibility is involved, is it proper that it should be shuffled on to some other Minister?

Mr, Speaker: Normally, if a Statute places a responsibility upon a Minister it would be his duty to answer, but it is very difficult to make general Rulings upon these subjects until one has the actual facts before one. I do not know what answer the right hon. Gentleman will receive from the Paymaster-General. I am not without hope that it will dissipate his doubts and answer his Question satisfactorily.

BUSINESS OF THE HOUSE (SUPPLY)

Ordered,
That this day Business other than the Business of Supply may be taken before Ten o'clock—[Mr. R. A. Butler.]

TELEVISION (COMMERCIAL ADVERTISEMENTS) (No. 2)

3.39 p.m.

Mr. Christopher Mayhew: I beg to move,
That leave be given to bring in a Bill to amend the Television Act, 1954, by prohibiting the interruption of programmes by commercial advertisements and to regulate the intervals between advertisements.
The purpose of my proposed Bill is to stop interruptions by advertisements altogether, confining advertisements to the beginning and end of the programmes; and to stop programme controllers shortening the programmes by regulating the intervals between advertisements.
In itself, the unlawful interruption of a programme by a commercial advertisement is not perhaps a very serious matter, but when it goes on night after night in the homes of million of people it becomes a public nuisance which ought to be stopped. The present position is that the Television Act, 1954, lays down that advertisements shall not be inserted otherwise than at the beginning or the end of a programme or in natural breaks therein. The intention of that Act and the intention of Parliament was perfectly clear, that advertisements would be allowed only in intervals which would have taken place anyhow, that is to say, between acts of a play, at 'half-time in football matches, between races at race meetings, and so on.
A natural break is one that would occur in any case, and an unnatural one is a break that is specially created to enable advertisements to be inserted. Anybody who switches on to I.T.V. can see that the intention of Parliament and the intention of the Act is being violated over and over again, night after night.
Breaks are being specially made in programmes of almost every type: discussion programmes, science programmes, news programmes, children's programmes, half-hour plays, thrillers,"westerns"—all of them. Even in a film, often constructed purposely to create an atmosphere lasting from start to finish, artificial breaks may be made three, four, even five times. In quiz games, one actually gets interruptions between the introduction of the contestants and the asking of the first question.
it may be said that the only programmes not interrupted are religious programmes and the discussion programme entitled "Free Speech". One might say, I hope without irreverence, that television advertisers hold back only for the Lord God and for the Lord Boothby. I think that that just about sums it up.
These constant unnatural breaks are a source of great joy and profit to the programme contractors. To a large extent, they are the source of the totally abnormal—almost indecently high—profits now being made. Indeed, when, as must happen in the course of nature, the programme contractors die, and are buried, I expect them to have engraved on their costly marble tombstones, not "R.I.P.", but "End of Part I", because that term is just about the basis of their prosperity.
These four words are a little masterpiece of hypocrisy. Nine times out of ten they announce a break that is not natural. Nine times out of ten, they announce that a commercial advertisement is coming that is wholly incongruous with what has gone before. Suddenly, we may be switched from a death-bed scene in a play to a Butlin's holiday camp. The Daily Telegraph announced that last week, when a "western" was cut off at a stage when the Red Indians were expected to attack, it was cut off by a commercial for scalp lotion.
Hon. Members who saw the first "break-in plug" about two and a half years ago, on the first day of I.T.V. operations, may remember it. Characteristically, it occurred in a crime film set in the United States. The detective walked down the stairs, gun in hand, expecting trouble, and, as his foot touched the last step, we suddenly saw an obviously terrified man staring at us from behind a desk—it was the editor of the London Daily Mail, about to ask us to buy his newspaper. That was the first break-in plug. These break-in plugs are symbols of vandalism and profiteering, and are one of our nastiest cultural imports from the United States of America.
What is the defence of the Authority—

Mr. Stephen McAdden: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. I understand that hon. Members make

themselves responsible for the statements they make in this House. Is it, therefore, in order for the hon. Member for Woolwich, East (Mr. Mayhew) to make these allegations if, in fact, he has not watched commercial television? Or are we to understand that he spends practically all his time watching it, because he thinks it much better?

Mr. Speaker: I have no means of checking the truth of the hon. Member's statements, but I always find him to have reason for what he says, and I have no reason to suppose that he is misleading the House now. I regret to say that my own experience of television is not wide enough to enable me to check the hon. Member's statements.

Mr. Mayhew: In some respects, Mr. Speaker, you are more fortunate than some of us. Perhaps I may now carry on, after a somewhat unnatural break—although it must be conceded that the hon. Member for Southend, East (Mr. McAdden) did speak about television. He did not intervene to discuss a detergent or a toothpaste.
A moment ago I asked: what is the defence of the Independent Television Authority in this matter? The Authority says that a natural break is not definable, and that Parliament's intentions were not clear. But even if we cannot define the natural break, why should it follow that we will permit all breaks of any kind? The Act lays down that a programme can be interrupted only in a natural break, and if one cannot define the word "natural" one might just as well argue that there should not be any interruptions of any kind. That, however, is not relevant at the moment, because my proposed Bill seeks to relieve the Authority of the burdensome task of deciding what is a natural, or what is an unnatural break, by prohibiting all interruptions of any kind by advertisements.
The Authority, however, goes further, and says that interruptions by advertisements actually improve the programme. When my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Northfield (Mr. Chapman) and I went to discuss this subject with the Chairman and Director-General of I.T.A., I asked what positive gain there was in interrupting the Bronowski science programmes with advertisements for detergents, and so on. The Director-General


replied that there was a positive gain. He said, and here I quote from the agreed report:
A pause was an advantage in exposition, just as chapters were an advantage in a book.
On that one must comment that it is very sad that scientists have written their books so often without the advice of the Director-General. For example, how much clearer would have been the "Origin of Species", or the "General Theory of Relativity" if the chapters had been interlarded with advertisements for detergents and toothpaste? Yet that is precisely the attitude adopted by the Director-General. It is, of course, nonsense. It is special pleading on behalf of the advertisers, and the programme contractors to whom the Director-General so often refers as the "partners" of the Authority.
The truth is that these breaches are profitable to the contractors, and that the Authority is too weak to stop them. The truth was said the other night. My wife rang up Associated Television after a film had been constantly interrupted, and the young lady who answered, with great honesty, told my wife the truth. She said, "Well, madam, if we had the commercials only at the beginning, and the end, few people would see them. "That is the truth. It is not that these unnatural breaks are legal or desirable, but that they are profitable, and that the Authority is too weak to stop the practice.
I am asking leave to introduce a simple, one-Clause amending Bill. I wish that I could continue to speak about it a little longer, but the conventions of the House prevent me. I ask the House, and hon. Members opposite, not to oppose it, or, if hon. Members opposite do oppose it. to do so today and not on a subsequent Friday when Private Members' Bills are before the House. That would be the courageous path. Indeed, were I a supporter of I.T.V. I am not sure that I would not look with considerable favour on a concession or compromise in this direction.
I.T.V. would gain more, I think, for their reputation if they accepted the suggestions in the proposed Bill than they do in that pompous and unconvincing newspaper advertising on which so much is being spent: at present. It might be wise, and in their own interest, to make a concession on this point. There is no reason

why this should be a party matter. This is a practical Bill. It clarifies a thoroughly unsatisfactory situation, and I think that hon. Members opposite will find that a large number of their constituents of all parties support its aims. I therefore ask leave of the House to introduce the Bill.

3.50 p.m.

Mr. Francis Noel-Baker: rose—

Mr. Speaker: Does the hon. Gentleman rise to oppose the Bill?

Mr. F. Noel-Baker: Yes, Mr. Speaker.
I should like, very briefly and in an impromptu manner, to oppose the Bill which my hon. Friend the Member for Woolwich, East (Mr. Mayhew) seeks leave to introduce on the ground that it does not go far enough. On this side of the House, at least, I think we all heard with the warmest sympathy everything he said about commercial television. The commercials are now interpolated into television programmes at what even the Postmaster-General must admit are the most unnatural, but the most profitable, breaks that the programme contractors can find.
There is growing evidence that the television viewing public is becoming extremely "fed up" with these commercials, not only with the timing of them, that is to say, the points at which they are inserted, but also, of course, with their content. I understand that there are now on the market mechanical devices which enable the viewer, by pressing a button, to suppress at least the sound of the commercial, being able to release it again when the programme resumes. It really is fantastic that the viewer should be obliged to go to the expense of acquiring a mechanical suppressor of this kind to achieve any sort of continuity in his television programmes.
My hon. Friend did not make clear whether he wanted to do away with all commercial advertising on Independent Television, or whether he wanted merely to relegate it to the beginning or end of each particular programme. I gather that he wishes to relegate it to the beginning or end of a programme. That would be a vast improvement on the present situation, but I urge my hon. Friend to consider whether this is not one of the many questions which really ought to be


looked at by an independent inquiry into advertising in all its aspects.
The House will recall that, on 21st November last, I was successful in the Ballot for Private Members' Motions, and that I sought the introduction of a Royal Commission to investigate all aspects of the advertising industry, to recommend what safeguards might be necessary in the public interest and to suggest how they could be brought into force. The object of my brief remarks on that occasion was not to take any particular line about the advertising industry itself. I was very careful to say that, although I myself found certain aspects of it highly offensive, I went no further than that.
Many different sections of the community and important representative bodies in the country find some parts of the advertising industry not only offensive but dangerous. Toothpaste advertising, for instance, has aroused the strongest comments from dentists and the British Dental Association. Some aspects of medical advertising, about tranquillisers, for instance—drugs such as Persomnia and P.R.—have aroused widespread anxiety among doctors and the British Medical Association. [An HON. MEMBER: "Camay."] One of my hon. Friends reminds me of the existence of a soap called"Camay", which is supposed to contain an ingredient which costs £9 an ounce. Probably, my hon. Friend the Member for Woolwich, East has seen it advertised on television. This dangerous soap, in fact, contains a chemical which gives many people dermatitis. We have tried to find an occasion for raising the matter in the House, and I am glad that my hon. Friend has given us the opportunity today.
Many people and organisations in this country take a very close and apprehensive interest in advertising. They include such organisations as the National Trust, the Council for the Preservation of Rural England, the journalists' trade unions, the N.U.J. and the Institute of Journalists, the Consumer Advisory Council of the British Standards Institution, and the Consumer Association, the new body which publishes Which? In addition to those bodies, the British Medical Association, the British Dental Association and the Pharma-

ceutical Association take an anxious interest in what is going on.
It may interest the Postmaster-General to know that each one of those bodies proposes to send representatives to a meeting to be held in a Committee Room in the precincts of this Palace in about ten days to consider how we can press on with a campaign to promote the establishment of an independent inquiry into advertising. I beg the right hon. Gentleman and his right hon. and hon. Friends, particularly those hon. Gentlemen concerned with the advertising interests which are so heavily over-represented on the benches opposite, to see the advisability of their agreeing to an independent inquiry before they are driven into it by mounting public opinion.
As my hon. Friend said, this is not a party issue. He was very anxious to have some support, or even, perhaps, some opposition of the kind I am providing, from the other side of the House. Certainly, we are happy that, in our wider campaign for an inquiry into advertising, we have support from all quarters, not only from the broad range of bodies to which I have already referred but from members of all political parties, including the Conservative Party. Therefore, in opposing my hon. Friend's Motion, because I do not think that it goes far enough, I beg him and the Government to give a little more serious attention to the advisability of urging the advertising interests to take a less negative attitude towards the widespread desire for an inquiry into advertising, and I beg the Government themselves to take steps to ensure that such an inquiry is set on foot.

Question put and agreed to.

Sir Godfrey Nicholson: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. Have we not been witnessing what is practically an abuse of the rules of the House? Surely an hon. Member who opposes a Motion for leave to introduce a Bill, or professes to oppose it, should do it sincerely and genuinely, carrying his opposition to a Division, if he can find someone else to appoint as a Teller. Is it not a pity that the rules of the House should be so abused?

Mr. Speaker: I cannot impute insincerity to an hon. Member who advances as a reason for opposing a Motion for


leave to introduce a Bill that it does not go far enough and that he would rather have an inquiry into the whole position than the Bill which it is proposed to put before the House. Hon. Members may think what they like about the merits of that, but it does not enable me to impute any insincerity to the hon. Member for Swindon (Mr. F. Noel-Baker), and I see nothing in the rules obliging me to do anything in the matter.

Mr. Ronald Bell: Further to that point of order, Mr. Speaker. Is it not usual for an hon. Member who formally opposes a Motion for leave to introduce a Bill in the House, certainly under this rule where only an hon. Member opposing is allowed to be heard after the mover, to follow his opposition with his voice? Even if he does not challenge it to a Division, should he not at least shout "No"? Since the hon. Member for Swindon (Mr. F. Noel-Baker) has not done so, are we to take it that, in the elaboration of his own arguments, he succeeded in persuading himself that he was mistaken?

Mr. Speaker: I do not think that there is a point of order here at all. It is usual, of course, if an hon. Member rises to oppose a Motion for leave to introduce a Bill that he should, at least with his voice, signify that. I did not hear the hon. Gentleman shout "No." I understand that he did not, because I put the Question clearly enough and nobody that I heard shouted "No." That being so, the Motion for leave to bring in the Bill has been agreed to by the House.

Mr. A. Woodburn: Further to that point of order, Mr. Speaker. Is it not the case that, very often, speeches are made against Motions for leave to introduce Bills in the House, and nobody, at the end, shouts "No," the matter being carried nem. con.?

Mr. Speaker: I was asked to consider a point of Order about the special procedure with regard to these so-called Ten Minutes Rule Bills. I said that, in my experience, it was usual for an hon. Member who rose to oppose a Motion for leave to introduce a Bill for any reason at all—there are many reasons for which a Bill may be opposed, and we have had some advanced today—to follow his opposition, when the Question was nut, with his voice against the Motion, That leave be given to bring in the Bill. However, I heard no "Noes" to the Question which I put, so I now put the next Question which it is proper for me to put, namely. Who will prepare and 'bring in the Bill?

Bill ordered to be brought in by Mr. Mayhew, Mr. Ness Edwards, Mr. Ernest Davies, Mr. George Darling, and Mr. Wedgwood Benn.

TELEVISION (COMMERCIAL ADVERTISEMENTS) (NO. 2)

Bill to amend the Television Act, 1954, by prohibiting the interruption of programmes by commercial advertisements and to regulate the intervals between advertisements, presented accordingly and read the First time: to be read a Second time upon Friday, 6th March, and to be printed. [Bill 72.]

Orders of the Day — SUPPLY [19th February] [3RD ALLOTTED DAY]

CIVIL ESTIMATES AND ESTIMATES FOR REVENUE DEPARTMENTS, TOGETHER WITH ESTIMATE FOR THE MINISTRY OF DEFENCE, 1959–60

(VOTE ON ACCOUNT)

Resolution reported.
That a sum, not exceeding £1,272,018,000, be granted to Her Majesty, on account, for or towards defraying the charges for the following Civil and Revenue Departments and for the Ministry of Defence for the year ending on the 31st day of March, 1960.

Resolution agreed to.

[For details of Resolution, see OFFICIAL REPORT, 19th February, 1959; cols. 552–555.]

LEGAL AID

4.0 p.m.

Sir Frank Soskice: I beg to move,
That this House calls upon Her Majesty"s Government to implement the recommendation contained in the Seventh Annual Report of the Lord Chancellor's Advisory Committee on Legal Aid to enable free legal aid to be given where the disposable income of the applicant is over £156 but not in excess of £208 and to exclude from legal aid those persons whose disposable income is over £600 instead of £420.
The Motion calls upon the Government, in effect, to increase the limit below which free legal aid is granted from the present limit of £156 to £208 and also to increase the upper limit within which it can be granted from the present limit of £420 to a new limit of £600.
The House will know that under the terms of the present Legal Aid Act, 1949, the upper limit is £420 of what is called disposable income. If one is above that limit, one is outside the range of those qualified to have legal aid and, equally, if one has more than £500 of what is called disposable income one may be refused aid on that ground. That is the upper limit.
Section 3 of the Act provides that the contribution which one may be called upon to pay, that is to say, the maximum contribution, can be a sum equivalent to

one-half the amount by which one's actual disposable income exceeds the sum of £156 and the effect of that is that if one's disposable income is under £156 one can get legal aid free of any contribution, provided, of course, that the local legal aid committee certifies that one has a reasonable case and thinks it proper to give a certificate. If one's disposable income is over £156 but below £420, one may be called upon to pay a contribution of the amount that I have indicated, namely, one-half the amount by which one's income exceeds £156 and if it is above the limit of £420 one is disqualified altogether.
I referred to the maximum contribution. Of course, the maximum contribution is not necessarily the actual contribution which one will be called upon to pay. It is important to bear in mind that the average contributions work out at a very considerable sum. In paragraph 36 of the Report, there is to be found what is the average contribution that applicants for legal aid are actually called upon to pay, and that figure, in the case of a High Court action, is an average of £49 18s., and, in the case of a county court action, £40 17s.
One would not have a clear idea as to how the scheme works unless one has some idea of what is meant by the phrase, "disposable income". It does not mean the actual total income. It means the total income after certain disregards and deductions are made which are authorised by the terms of Section 4 of the Act. Those deductions are of various kinds— Income Tax, maintenance of dependants, rates, rent, and so on. The actual sums which are allowed were set out in certain statutory regulations made in 1950 by the Lord Chancellor under the terms of the Act and it may be helpful to consider for a moment what figures are provided under those regulations.
First, if one wants to reduce someone's real income to his disposable income one takes away the amount of Income Tax which he has to pay. Then, under the regulations, there is deducted a certain amount of the rent which he has to pay for his house and one only deducts the amount which he has to pay beyond 15s. Taking an average family which, I shall assume, pays 30s. a week for rent, to get at the disposable income of the breadwinner of the family one would, in that


case, disregard the first 15s. of the 30s. which the family pays.
For a married couple, up to £1 is allowed as a kind of notional allowance for keeping the other spouse. A man gets £I allowed if he has a wife living with him. Then there are allowances for dependent children, assessed on the rates applicable for National Assistance, and various other permissible allowances. If we try to see how that would normally work out in the case of a family, possibly this would not be a wholly untypical case.
I start at the upper end of the limit—the £420 limit. Suppose we get someone whose disposable income is at the top of the £420 limit, what do we have to add on to that to find out what is his actual income? Suppose that he has to pay 30s. a week for rent and that he is a married man with children, he will have some Income Tax to pay. His gross income can be computed in this way. We take his disposable income at £420, add the disregard for his rent, 15s. a week or £39 a year, and add £1 a week or £52 a year for his allowance for keeping his wife, a total of £511 a year.
If he has children he will have an allowance on National Assistance scales in respect of his children and, on top of that, there is his Income Tax. Therefore, we may take, very roughly, the kind of top gross income which would bring the applicant within the scope of the Act as about £600 a year.
In terms of modern money values, the submission which I make to the House—and I do no more than re-echo the recommendation of the Lord Chancellor's Advisory Committee in its seventh Report—is that these figures, judged by modern day values, are wholly unrealistic. I want to look at the present scale of values compared with the scale which the Rushcliffe Committee had in mind when it originally recommended these upper and lower limits.
Before doing so, I think that it is right to remind the House that a great many of these claims brought under the Legal Aid schemes are, for example, those for personal injuries in road accidents, and so on, and that the applicant, in the assumed circumstances in which he makes application for legal aid, is a

person who has been injured, maybe suffering great pain and a great deal of residual disability. He may have been out of work for many months and he may have had to draw considerably on savings which he may have put by.
Moreover, one has always to bear in mind that if someone contemplates bringing a lawsuit, for example, in the case of a road accident in which he has been involved, he often goes to his lawyer and says, "Can you assure me that I shall certainly win so that if I incur the expenses of litigation I shall certainly be recouped?" There are very few legal advisers who could say that the chances are 100 per cent. Very often the most optimistic advice that can be given to him is that he has a reasonably good case and that he will probably win it, if the witnesses come up to scratch and so on.
So the man who has suffered serious injury, who may have had to draw upon his savings and who has probably been out of work for many months, suffering pain and disability, and who is told by his legal adviser in an optimistic case that he will probably win, has to make up his mind whether he will apply for a legal aid certificate and make the contribution which he will be called upon to pay.
That is the position at the upper end of the scale. At the other end of the scale the person concerned must have a disposable income of under £156 to avoid being called upon to make a contribution. The best way of getting at a realistic appraisal of the situation of those at the lower end of the scale is to look at one of the examples cited by the Committee in the Report which I am asking the Government to implement today.
On page 40 four cases are set out. Case A gives a good idea of the situation in which those at the lower end of the scale may well find themselves. It is that of a retirement pensioner and his wife paying a rent of 16s. 4d. a week and making an application in respect of personal injuries arising out of a street accident. The gross income is assessed at £247, the disposable income at £183. In consequence, the maximum contribution they can be called upon to pay is no less than £13 10s. As the average cost of a High Court action is in the region


of £50, they will no doubt be called upon to pay the full £13 10s.
My hon. Friend the Member for Stockton-on-Tees (Mr. Chetwynd) has kindly put in my hand the particulars of a case in his constituency. It is of a person who received a serious personal injury, who has been out of work for many months, is in receipt of National Assistance, who can only just make ends meet with the greatest difficulty, and who has been assessed to pay a maximum contribution of £10 10s. It is true that he has only been called upon to pay by instalments of 17s. 6d. a month, but in such a situation, if we look at it through the eyes of a person who has been seriously injured and is living on National Assistance, having been out of work for many months, it is utterly unrealistic to suppose that he, being advised, I suppose, that he has a good case—although no case can ever be described as a certainty—will feel encouraged when asked to contribute 10 guineas.
Those cases can be multiplied almost indefinitely and all hon. Members will be able to point to cases of that kind in their constituencies which must have arisen over and over again. For persons whose incomes are at the lower end of the scale, the prospect of having to pay a contribution of that kind means the difference between litigating and not litigating, getting their rights and losing their rights. The figures incorporated in the Legal Aid Act, 1949, were based on the recommendation of the Rushcliffe Committee. That Committee reported in May, 1945, it is now 1959, and I have made a comparison between retail prices in 1945 and September, 1958.
Supposing we take retail prices in 1945 as being 100, the present day figure is 184. If we take average weekly wage rates at 100 in May, 1945, the present comparative rate is about 201. It follows, I submit, that is is completely unrealistic to apply those 1945 figures to present-day circumstances. The result is that large numbers of persons are left out of the scheme who it was intended should be within it.
It is in those circumstances that the Lord Chancellor's Advisory Committee recommended in its Report, which was put before the House on 13th March last year—nearly a year ago—that among

other changes which should be made, the lower and upper income limits should be changed in the sense I am urging upon the Government. The Committee recommended, for the reasons I have given, that the present existing limits do not correspond to reality and should be changed upwards in both cases in the figures I have put before the House.
If one asks what is the cost which is likely to fall upon public funds by these changes, the answer is that it is very small indeed. If hon. Members will look at paragraph 18 of the Report they will find that the total annual cost of four recommendations—and I am only urging upon the Government two of those four—would be a gross sum of £350,000. That figure, however, must be revised to arrive at a net sum, because of the fact that it is reduced by the amounts which are awarded to successful litigants under the legal aid scheme by way of costs, those costs going back into the Legal Aid Fund. It is pointed out by the Advisory Committee that the £350,000 annual gross cost would, when account is taken of costs paid back by successful litigants into the fund, be reduced to about £175,000. in other words by half. As I have said, that is the cost of implementing four recommendations, and not two.
So really the expenditure I am asking the Government to put upon public funds is well below the sum of £175,000. If one wants to see the significance of this, one must look at some of the expenditure which the present Government have already put upon public funds, for instance, that resulting from raising the Bank Rate in 1957. The cost of that operation was over £50 million, if not nearer £100 million, and it is derisory for the Government to hesitate for over a year in making this small and necessary change to try to make it possible for large numbers of persons who have suffered civil injuries, very often injuries which wholly change the course of their lives, to obtain the justice which is waiting for them in the courts.
It is high time that the Government took some action in this matter. The Government have put upon the Order Paper an Amendment in which they seek to congratulate themselves on two changes and one intimated change. These changes are in themselves extremely useful and would obtain the approval of all hon. Members of the


House, but the Government end their Amendment by calling upon the House to recognise
… that it is desirable to modify the financial provisions of the Legal Aid Scheme when circumstances permit.
That is a Parliamentary way of saying jam yesterday, jam tomorrow, but never jam today. All the jam we want is this little extra sum of £175,000 that will make it possible for large numbers of persons to obtain justice which at present, because of scarcity of means, is denied them.
One can actually see, by looking at the figures quoted in the Report, how the present contribution scales which can be called for under the Act can be worked out. One sees in the Report a record of a declining number of applications for legal aid over a period of a year, due largely to the scale of the contributions which can be called for and the present financial limits which are within the scheme. It is worth while quoting roughly how the figures work out. In the period between the second Report and the seventh Report, which we are considering today, the figures show that there were 53,000 applicants for certificates in a year. They went down annually to 51,000, 47,000, 43,000, 40,000, and in the period covered by the seventh Report they are up slightly to 41,000. As the Advisory Committee points out, however, that is simply because during the year the Government, very rightly, extended the provisions of the Legal Aid Scheme to include county courts. So if one takes account of the fact that the scheme has been extended, there is a continuing decline.
In paragraph 2 of the Report there is a description of the reasons for this. It says first that because of the full employment which the country has enjoyed for a number of years people were not minded to apply for such aid. Full employment has gone from us. The right hon. and learned Gentleman may argue—and I think that we would have a great deal of sympathy with him if he does—that this can soon be cured when, in May, there is a change of Government; and no doubt it will be cured, but that is some time from now. The other reason which the Advisory Committee assigns is simply the high scale of contributions, and it is of that I am complaining at the moment.
Point is given to the figures I have set out when one looks further in the Report

at paragraph 10 and finds that of the 41,000 who applied in the period covered by the seventh Annual Report, when they were told the scale of the contributions they would be called upon to meet, over 220,00 of them refused the proffered aid. This is very convincing proof that under the present scales and the present income limits the scheme is not doing what it was hoped it would do.
The Report goes on to point out, in considering the upper income limit, that the percentage of those who were refused legal aid over the periods covered by the last three Reports were very nearly doubled; that is to say, in terms of percentage very nearly twice as many were refused legal aid, because they were above the upper income limit, as three years ago. The actual figures were 8·2 per cent., 11·l per cent. and 14·6 per cent. Unless the Government do something to implement the recommendation of the seventh Report of the Advisory Committee, I do not know what the next year may show. It may show 16 per cent., 17 per cent., or an even higher percentage of persons excluded.
One has always to bear in mind the percentage of successful litigants, the figures for which are also in the Report. In the period covered, of the persons who applied for legal aid certificates and who accepted legal aid, and who went to the courts with the assistance they received under the Act, about 78 per cent. were either Wholly or partially successful and only 3·3 per cent. lost the actions they brought.
This means that of the 22,000 people who, having been offered legal aid certificates refused them because they did not feel able to meet the contributions they were called, upon to pay, three-quarters had causes of action which they could enforce in the courts and which would result in awards being made in their favour. In other words, it means that within a year, if we look at the people who refused the legal aid certificates, apart from those who were not allowed to have them because they were above the existing limit, three-quarters were deprived of their rights in the courts because they could not afford to enforce them. That is a serious state of affairs and the Government should not be complacent but should take steps to do something about it.
The National Assistance Board is called upon to assess this disposable income, and it is perhaps worth remembering that the National Assistance scales have been increased about six times since the Act was passed, whereas the corresponding disregard scales under the Legal Aid Scheme have not been increased. For example, the maximum allowance for dependent relatives under the scheme for the purpose of the disregard is £52 a year, whereas for adults under the National Assistance Act it is more than double that.
Those are the reasons which make a strong case why these very small changes, which the Advisory Committee advocate, should now be implemented by the Government. I hope that the right hon. and learned Gentleman will take this Motion seriously. The answer which he has given to it, in effect, is that he agrees that it is perfectly right in principle, but he does not know when he will implement the recommendation. That is completely unsatisfactory. The change is small and will not cost much.
The Government have had this recommendation before them for nearly a year. The Advisory Committee's Report was placed before Parliament in March last year. The Government have been sitting on it and have done nothing about these recommendations for nearly a year, and it is about time that they bestirred themselves and realised that large numbers of people who were intended to come within the scope of the Act are excluded because the Government will not make the changes which they acknowledge are right and should be made. Because they are not within the scope of the Act many people are not able to enforce rights which belong to them and which, in many cases, would make an enormous difference to them, particularly those who have been seriously injured in accidents.
It is high time that the Government took a serious view of the matter and took steps to implement these two recommendations.

4.27 p.m.

The Attorney-General (Sir Reginald Manningham-Buller): I beg to move, to leave out from "House" to the end of the Question and to add instead thereof:
endorses the introduction by Her Majesty's Government of a scheme for oral legal advice; welcomes the announcement of the intention

of Her Majesty's Government to implement the provisions of Sections 21 to 23 of the Legal Aid and Advice Act, 1949, relating to legal aid in criminal courts, and the provisions of Section 5, relating to legal aid in matters not involving litigation; and recognises that it is desirable to modify the financial provisions of the Legal Aid Scheme when circumstances permit".
I have listened with interest to all that the right hon. and learned Gentleman has said and to his references to the Seventh Report of the Advisory Committee. Of course, I expected that he would refer to that Report and, in particular, to the Comimittee's recommendation that the Legal Aid and Advice Act, 1949, should be amended so as to permit free legal aid where 'the disposable income—which is, as the right hon. and learned Gentleman said, income after various deductions have been made and which might broadly be described as free income—is £208 or less instead of £156 or less, and to raise the limits of the Legal Aid Scheme so as to include within its scope those whose income is £600 or less instead of the present limit of £420.
Although the main burden of the right hon. and learned Gentleman's speech related to the contributions which applicants for legal aid are required to pay, the Motion makes no reference to the incidence of those contributions. The Advisory Committee, in its Report, gives particulars of cases where the burden is very heavy. In recent years I have had many letters and answered many questions on that matter. But that is not the subject raised by the Motion. The Motion is much narrower than that. It merely seeks to secure that a greater number of persons will be entitled to free legal aid at the lower end of the scale and a greater number of persons brought within the scope of the scheme at the other end of the scale. The Motion has nothing to do with the incidence of contributions.
I should like to make it clear at the outset, as, indeed, is clear from the terms of the Amendment, that we do not flatly reject the proposal of the Advisory Committee which is embodied in the Motion, but we do feel that that proposal should be considered in its relationship to the whole scheme and to the extent to which that scheme is in operation today.
If I may digress for a moment, I should like to remind the House of the history in relation to the Legal Aid and Advice Act, 1949. I was a member of


the Rushcliffe Committee. I think that I am now the only Member of the House who can claim to have been a member of that Committee. The Committee produced the scheme which has been embodied in the Legal Aid and Advice Act, 1949. It was appointed by the then Lord Chancellor, Lord Simon, in the war years, and, although it was a large Committee, it produced a unanimous Report. It devised a very complete scheme, providing not only for legal aid in the courts, but also for legal advice.
When the Legal Aid and Advice Bill came before the House my colleagues and I on this side—we were then on the other side—did our best to make the Bill as good as possible. I well remember the useful discussions which we had in Committee, when members of all parties co-operated in trying to make the Bill as good a Measure as possible. We were rather proud of what we had been able to achieve when the Bill reached the Statute Book. Nearly all the recommendations of the Rushcliffe Committee were accepted. As I have said, it was a very complete scheme.
The right hon. and learned Gentleman has complained more than once today about the fact that there has been about a year's delay in implementing a recommendation of the Advisory Committee. I do not make any complaint of the fact that there was a delay of four years between the unanimous Report of the Rushcliffe Committee and the enactment of its recommendations. I will not talk about the number of persons who, during those years, were not able to get legal aid in the courts and who could have got it if more prompt action had been taken. As a member of that Committee, I was disappointed by that delay, but I appreciate and recognise, as I think all of us on this side recognise, that the policies of the right hon. and learned Gentleman and hon. Members opposite led them into situations which made it difficult for them to give the Legal Aid Scheme the priority which it deserved.
That delay was disappointing. I do not wish to make any complaint about it or any capital out of it today, but it does not lie in the right hon. and learned Gentleman's mouth, in view of that four years' delay, to be critical of the non-implementation of a recommendation of the Seventh Report of the Advisory Committee, made less than a year ago.

Mr. F. H. Hayman: Does not the right hon. and learned Gentleman think that the vast majority of laymen would much rather have had the benefit of the National Health Scheme than the Legal Aid Scheme, however valuable that might have been?

The Attorney-General: Maybe time could have been found for both to the advantage of the country, perhaps at the expense of some of the nationalisation Measures.

Mr. Barnett Janner: Look at the number of times, since the Government have been in office, when requests have been made to implement the decisions of the very Committee which the right hon. and learned Gentleman is talking about. The Government have refused the implementation of matters which were discussed thirteen years ago.

The Attorney-General: The hon. Member cannot get away with that. I will deal with the recommendations in due course, if the hon. Gentleman will let me carry on with my speech.
I was saying that I am not making any complaint of the four years' delay. [Interruption.]It is part of the historical background. I dare say the hon. Member does not like it. I hoped that after that delay, once the Act was passed, there would not be delay in its implementation. I hoped that, having got on the Statute Book a complete scheme, after four years' delay, we would not have to wait very long before the scheme was brought into operation. While the Act gave powers to bring different parts of the Act into force at different times, I think that it was the general belief at that time that all parts of the Act would be brought into force—for it was a balanced scheme—as soon as the necessary machinery was set up. But that was not done.
The machinery provisions were brought into force on 1st September, 1949, but the legal aid which was made available was limited to legal aid in litigation in the High Court, and no further extension was made before the Socialist Government fell. No provision was made for legal advice and legal aid in matters not involving litigation, in the criminal courts or before tribunals, all matters which were dealt with in the Act. It has had


the serious result that ever since there has been a conflict of priorities. When funds have become available one has had to decide between amendment and alteration of parts of the Statute already brought into force—and these financial provisions, the subject of the Motion, are mainly in the Statute—and extending the application of the scheme. There has been that conflict throughout.
As the House knows, the Government have, on each occasion when further funds have been available, come to the conclusion that it was more important to extend the operation of the scheme. If I may remind the House, in 1953 it was extended to the palatine courts, which was only a minor extension. In 1956, it was extended to the county courts. Now we are extending it to legal advice.
The Legal Advice Scheme, for which provision was made in Section 7 of the Act, which deals with oral advice, comes into operation next Monday. We have already given an undertaking to implement Section 5 of the Act, which deals with legal aid in matters not involving litigation, during the coming financial year. My right hon. Friend the Home Secretary has given an undertaking to bring into force during the coming financial year the provisions of Sections 21 to 23, which relate to legal aid in the criminal courts. I do not think that anyone familiar with the situation will doubt the need to implement the Sections of the Act which deal with legal aid in criminal cases.
If our record is contrasted with that of the party opposite, bearing in mind that the Rushcliffe Report was published in 1945, I do not think that it can be disputed that our record of achievement in this sphere of social service compares most favourably with that of right hon. and hon. Members opposite.
The right hon. and learned Gentleman made some criticism of the excessive contributions which have to be paid under the 1950 regulations, which were passed by the Government of which he was then a member. In its First Report of 1951 the Advisory Committee commented that some contributions were excessive. It made the same comment in its Second, Third, Fourth and Fifth Reports. But in none of those Reports did it recommend that the Act or the 1950 regulations made by the Socialist Government

should be amended, for it was its view that the first priority for any additional money that was available, should be to extend the operation of the Act by bringing further parts of it into force.
It was in its Sixth Report it said that the Legal Aid (Assessment of Resources) Regulations should be brought, where practicable and not undesirable, into line with the corresponding National Assistance regulations which have been amended several times since 1950, but the Advisory Committee did not give that recommendation the highest priority. The Committee said that it was still of the opinion that the Legal Advice Scheme should be brought into effect.
In the Seventh Report, to which the right hon. and learned Member for Newport made such reference, the Committee recommended an amendment of the financial provisions and, also, that Section 5 and Section 7 should be brought into force, but it did not say which recommendation it considered most important. It said, in paragraph 20:
… we content ourselves by saying that in our opinion the Legal Aid and Advice Act will never function as intended until both our recommendations are carried out.
I am sure that we are right to bring into force the legal advice provisions and to give them priority.
The Rushcliffe Committee pointed out that the voluntary advice system then operating
… which at best was somewhat patchy has become totally inadequate"—
and it forecast that the situation would deteriorate. That forecast was right and it really is and has been anomalous that legal aid in the courts should be available and legal advice which may avoid all necessity for recourse to the courts has not been. This is particularly true in relation to matrimonial cases where early advice may lead to reconciliation while aid in the courts may only lead to crystallising the differences between the parties.
Our Legal Advice Scheme comes into operation next Monday and I invite the House, by accepting the Amendment, to endorse its introduction. I wish to make one point about the impact which the Legal Advice Scheme may make on legal aid in the courts. One cannot estimate precisely what this impact is likely to be. It may well lead to less legally-aided litigation and so to some reduction of the


burden now carried by the State. How great a reduction no one now can say, but, of course, the greater the reduction the more room for manœuvre there would be with regard to the financial provisions of the Act and the regulations.
We recognise in our Amendment, and the right hon. and learned Member for Newport made some play of it, that it is desirable to modify these financial provisions when circumstances permit, but we feel that it is wise and sound policy to review the financial provisions when we have had experience of the effect of the operation on the scheme as a whole of the legal advice provisions. The number of people who pay contributions now under the Legal Aid Scheme is 18,000. While it is not possible to calculate the precise number who would receive free legal aid if the lower limit is raised—that is to say, instead of having to pay contributions they would be exempt from contributions—it would not be a low estimate, one would have thought, to put that number at about 9,000.
Again, it is not possible to form any precise estimate of the number who would be brought within the scope of the scheme by requiring a higher level, as the right hon. and learned Member submits. It may not be an under-estimate, and indeed it may be an over-estimate, to have in mind a figure also in the region of 9,000. Against those figures, which are very rough but probably somewhere near the sort of pattern, it is estimated by the Law Society that about 65,000 people in England and Wales would benefit from the Legal Advice Scheme, and 19,000 from getting legal aid in matters not involving litigation.
If those figures are anywhere about right, it is absolutely clear that the greatest good now will be done by what we are doing, namely, by introducing legal advice and legal aid in matters not involving litigation rather than by amending the financial provisions, as is suggested in the Motion. I should add that the right hon. and learned Member for Newport mentioned a figure of what he said would be the cost of implementing the Motion. He thought that it would be well below £175,000. I cannot accept that as a reliable figure. The information that I am given is that the figure will be considerably above that.
I do not wish it to be thought, however, that I have underestimated the gravity of the present situation, or the hardship that the amount of contributions sometimes causes. I have certainly not been allowed to forget that situation by letters from hon. Members and Questions which I have had to answer on the subject. But I think it is true to say that this situation has its origin in the failure of right hon. Gentlemen opposite to bring the Legal Aid and Advice Scheme into operation as a scheme. If that had been done, we should now be in a position to review the whole of its operation, but ever since this piecemeal process was started there has been this constant conflict of priorities which it has not been easy to resolve but which, in my belief, has been rightly resolved.
The right hon. and learned Member for Newport said that very large numbers of persons whom it was intended should be in the Scheme had been left out because of a change in modern money values. I do not dispute that that may be true in relation to some people, but it also must be borne in mind, on the other side of the picture, that many people, who are not eligible for legal aid but who would have been entitled to it when the scheme first came into force, are not entitled to it today due not so much to the fall in the value of the £ as to the fact that their real wages have risen.
Workers in many industries whose wages, in 1950, would have brought them within the financial limits of the Legal Aid Scheme, would not be entitled today to legal aid even if those limits were adjusted according to the Cost-of-Living Index. While I am asking the House to recognise that, I am not saying—indeed, the Amendment says to the contrary—that modification of the financial provisions will not be desirable when circumstances permit.
So far as I am aware, there is no indication, either in a fall in the number of applicants for legal aid or in an increase in the numbers refused on financial grounds, that the scheme, broadly speaking, is failing to provide aid for those who need it. I advise the House to reject the Motion and accept the Amendment, which gets the priorities right. When the Legal Advice scheme is in operation, and when we can see its effect, is the time to review the financial provisions.

4.50 p.m.

Mr. Barnett Janner: I listened with very great care to the Attorney-General's speech. Of all the speeches he has ever made this is about the most illogical and the most unreasonable, and the right hon. and learned Gentleman on many occasions has made illogical and unreasonable speeches.
What is the use of the Attorney-General trying to get out of the attempt which is being made to provide reasonable provisions, which will cost about £175,000 to put into effect, by the arguments he has used? He said that it would cost more, but that is not what was said by the Committee which considered the matter. What is the use of the Attorney-General dragging up arguments about what the Rushcliffe Committee said in view of circumstances prevailing thirteen years ago and not having reference to what is happening today? His is a kind of Rip van Winkle experience. I suppose that the Attorney-General has been sleeping from that time onwards and only waking occasionally when somebody asked a Question in the House calling upon him to implement the very proposals of the report which he says should have been implemented years ago.
The right hon. and learned Gentleman is not entitled to use the kind of argument which he puts forward now to cover up his own and his Government's deficiencies. Almost day in and day out it has been pointed out to him that the position is one in which the recommendations of the Rushcliffe Committee, of which he was such a distinguished member, should be carried into effect. Yet the invariable answer has been that the Government could not do this now but perhaps at some future time would be able to do something. Now the Attorney-General relies on the fact that thirteen years after a recommendation had been made to that effect he has suddenly decided to do what we have been pressing him for years to do, which is to give people an opportunity of obtaining financial assistance in securing legal advice. He relies upon that as an argument against what we ask him to do today; that is, to be fair to the man of middle or moderate income and give him an opportunity of having his case dealt with properly. I cannot see that that is at all

an answer to our point. At a cost of £175,000, or perhaps £200,000, the right hon. and learned Gentleman could carry out what was recommended by the Lord Chancellor's Committee which went into the matter and recommended that the income and assets limits should be raised to enable a litigant to receive aid.
Nobody today is given financial assistance unless he has a reasonable case. The House should take into consideration the fact that if a person cannot satisfy the appropriate committee that he has a substantial prima facie case he cannot get legal aid. That limits the numbers of persons helped under the Act to those who have substantial cases. We are dealing with men and women who are advised much more meticulously than is normally the case. Their case is examined by legal experts and they are told whether there is a reasonable chance of success. This is not a matter of asking for something to be done for litigants who enter into litigation recklessly or vexatiously. We are dealing with the position of men and women who are able to prove their case only with proper legal assistance, which they should be able to receive and to which they are entitled.
If people go to a lawyer before entering on litigation to ask whether their case has a reasonable chance of success, it is obvious that much public money will be saved, because if their case it not fairly strong the solicitor will clearly advise them not to bother to make an application for legal aid. I do not understand the financial argument advanced by the Attorney-General. The Attorney-General says that the Government will now permit financial assistance to be given to people to enable them to seek advice on whether they have a case. That means that such prospective litigants will have an opportunity of being advised and that public money will be saved in many instances.
The right hon. and learned Gentleman took credit for that provision which is to come into force on Monday. How many years have the Government been in office? If they had introduced such a provision long ago as they were pressed to do substantial sums of money would have been saved. It is niggardly of the Government not to realise that the limits in respect of means recommended years ago are now not applicable. When it made its recommendations, how was the Rushcliffe Committee to know what our


present condition would be, a condition which has resulted from Government policies and in which the sums then recommended represent much smaller amounts in real values?
If he has not already appreciated it, I hope that the attention of the right hon. and learned Gentleman will be forcefully drawn to paragraph 13 of the Lord Chancellor's Seventh Report which says:
While the comparison between those features of the Legal Aid and the National Assistance Regulations, which can properly be compared, makes, in our view, an overwhelming case for amendment of the former on the lines of the recommendation in our previous Report, a study of these cases satisfies us that something more fundamental is needed.
I do not know what the right hon. and learned Gentleman means when he speaks of priorities, for there cannot be anything more presented than an overwhelming case.
If the right hon. and learned Gentleman studies that paragraph he will see that it is inferentially recommended that an increase should be given substantial priority. There is no question of the Report saying that other recommendations should have priority. On the contrary, it implies that there is nothing more important.
The Attorney-General advances no reasonable excuse for refusing our amendments when he says that other recommendations are being brought into effect, for that is something which he should do in any case. We are trying to give the Government an opportunity to introduce provisions which the Report of a year ago says should be immediately put into effect.
I do not want to protract the discussion, for my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Newport (Sir F. Soskice) has put the most salient features before the House. As a practising solicitor, I can assure hon. Members that the difficulty which we seek to remedy is encountered every day. People who consult their solicitors are amazed to find that because of the present limits in respect of disposable income and assets, they cannot be assisted even when there is a fair prospect of winning their case.
One cannot tell a client that he is bound to win his case. That is impossible. It may be because at some stage other facts will emerge which the client has not been

able to place before his solicitor, without in any sense having attempted to deceive him, but because the client had no, appreciated the significance of those facts. Without such knowledge, the lawyer is unable to make a perfect assessment of the possibilities. If that were not so, very few cases would be fought in the courts, Litigants who appear in court in the vast majority of cases do not attempt to deceive. They honestly believe that what they say is correct. They often say things which are not correct and which prove to be not correct but honestly believing them to be correct. All those circumstances play a large part in litigation.
Is the Attorney-General saying that a man placed in circumstances such as I have mentioned should be advised to risk losing everything he has in the world because he has a very good chance of winning his case? I could not advise in that way. I do not know what the Attorney-General would do in such circumstances, but I am certain that in his former capacity as a counsel he would think very long before advising the solicitor consulting him to tell his client that there was a 100 per cent. chance of success, or even more than 75 per cent. He would be carefully guarded in his advice.
The right hon. and learned Gentleman did not seem to appreciate that we are not discussing just salaries or incomes but disposable incomes, that is, after taking certain expenditures into account. It is not a question of the amount a man receives. It is a question of the amount he has at his disposal. The Attorney-General knows that a disposable income of a certain amount today cannot have the same value in real terms as it had when the limits of amounts were originally decided.
If an intending litigant approached the right hon. and learned Gentleman for advice as counsel, the right hon. and learned Gentleman might have to say that although there was a very good chance of the case being won the litigant might well lose all his meagre capital which might be above the limit for legal aid. He might have to advise him to face the unhappy circumstances of having to give up whatever rights he has, even though he had a 60 per cent. or 75 per cent. chance of winning his case.
Figures have been given to show the number of people whose assets are within the present limits but who have refused to take assistance even when it has been offered because they have not been able to afford the amounts which they would have been called upon to pay. The Attorney-General said that the Government are dealing with that provision, but he also said that the figures fixed many years ago must be retained until other priorities have been considered.
That is not good enough. Our respective professions do not think that that is good enough, nor does the man in the street. If hon. Members opposite consult their constituents, they will find that general opinion is that that is not sufficient. The Legal Aid Act is important and it set out to do something of considerable value to many people. There are people who, because of being unable to afford litigation, have lost thousands of pounds because they have been afraid of losing even their few pieces of furniture and other small assets in litigation, even should they win the litigation.
Let us not misunderstand the position. One may even be dealing with a successful result, but in many cases the person who has won a case finds that the person on the other side is unable to meet even the costs awarded against him, let alone any amount awarded to him. If there was anything which demanded priority, one would have supposed that it was the very modest request put forward in our Motion. I hope that by the time the debate is concluded the Government will have realised that they are depriving people of legal aid who have only very modest means. It is true that people with the smallest means are included in the benefits and rich people can afford to pay for their own litigation. However, we are here dealing with the need of those with middle-class incomes, the very class whom the Government pretend to want to help. They are the people adversely affected by the present situation, and the Government have no right to delay a remedy any longer.

5.10 p.m.

Mr. Raymond Gower: The hon. Member for Leicester, North-West (Mr. Janner) has stressed the amazement of those who seek legal aid when they learn that they are not eligible for that

aid owing to the size of their disposable income. At that stage in his speech, the hon. Gentleman seemed to imply that serious problems of that kind were encountered both in his professional experience and in his constituency. For my part, I do not deny that I have met such people, but I find that there is a larger number of those who are rather frightened by the size of the contributions which they have to make.

Mr. Janner: I appreciate the kind of practice in which the hon. Member is engaged, and I know it very well, but does he not agree that it is those very reasons that make necessary what we are trying to advocate now? What does he say in regard to the priority for those in the class I have described?

Mr. Gower: I do not really dissent from what the hon. Gentleman says, but I feel that he would tend to lay greater emphasis on the number of people who are finding that they do not qualify for legal aid at all. I would tend to emphasise what I think is the greater number of those who obtain legal aid and are appalled at the size of the contribution which they are then called upon to pay. It may be just a matter of emphasis.
The hon. Gentleman went on to say that the Opposition were coming forward in a modest way asking for this improvement. It is not exactly a modest way, as illustrated by the Motion tabled in the names of the right hon. Gentleman the Leader of the Opposition and several of his right hon. and hon. Friends, and I can quite understand the manner in which my right hon. and learned Friend the Attorney-General rebutted that rather imposing Motion today. I do not complain that the Opposition should call attention to this state of affairs, but I do not regard the way in which they have called attention to it as a modest step. I think it is rather an impressive demonstration, if I may so describe it.
I think that the House can accept the order of priority which my right hon. and learned Friend set out in his speech. I think it was right that at a certain stage priority should be given to an extension of the Legal Aid Scheme to the county courts, and at that time I think it was preferable that that extension should have taken place rather than that we should have cured some of the financial defli-ciencies of the scheme as it then stood.


I think it is undoubtedly preferable, as my right hon. and learned Friend mentioned, that the commencement of legal advice next Monday should again be given priority, but, having said that, I concede that there is a case for a very careful scrutiny of the financial aspects of the scheme.
I think the House will agree that it has proved a very good scheme, subject to some of the failings, to which we are all referring. It has proved a better scheme, perhaps, than some people had feared or hoped at the time of its initiation, and, ever since it has been started, there has been a good deal of ill-informed criticism about it.
For example, I think that there is ill-informed criticism of the Law Society, which is responsible for much of the administration of this scheme. The Law Society is blamed quite wrongly for the non-admission of some citizens to the benefits of the scheme, whereas, as hon. Members are all aware, that is not within its field of decision. It is left for the aspect of the scheme which is administered with the help of the National Assistance Board.
In saying that, we can also say that it has proved not merely extremely helpful, as the hon. Gentleman said, but far more than that. It has proved a significant development of these post-war years, and I would be prepared to say, as my right hon. and learned Friend said, that we owe to the members of the Rushcliffe Committee a great debt, as well as to those who sat in this House at the time when the Act was passed, and Members on both sides of the House who contributed to the original Bill. That does not, however, mean that we should now say that it is perfect, and I do not think that the terms of the Amendment moved by my right hon. and learned Friend in any way cut across entirely the case made by the right hon. and learned Gentleman the Member for Newport (Sir F. Soskice). My right hon. and learned Friend and the Government have in fact conceded that there is a case for improvement in this financial sphere.
I should like to call the attention of my right hon. and learned Friend to one particular case, with which I have had a long association, arising in my own constituency; a case which possibly illustrates some of the defects in the existing

scheme. My constituents, Mr. and Mrs. C. Dodd, live in Barry at 294 Barry Road, and they are elderly people. They are retirement pensioners and live modestly in a council dwelling at that address. Mr. Dodd's sister, a Mrs. Emily Barrett, died intestate on 21st March, 1950, at 17 Sidney Road, Harrow, Middlesex. Prior to her death, Mrs. Barrett had been looked after by Mr. and Mrs. Evans, who were service tenants, in a sense, but who were really friends of her son, who predeceased her. On her death, my constituent, Mr. Dodd, being her brother, and believing himself to be the only next of kin, was: astonished when the tenant, Mr. Evans, asserted that he possessed a will. My constituent had reason to believe that this was a document of dubious authenticity, and naturally he was one of the people who sought the help of the Legal Aid Scheme.
In due course, his case was accepted and a caveat was entered against this will. Eventually, an action in the High Court of Justice in the Probate, Divorce and Admiralty Division was instituted. This was a long action, involving many witnesses, including an expert on handwriting, as my constituent believed, apparently with some right, that there was a forgery involved in the will. In due course, this action came before Mr. Justice Anthian Davies and judgment was entered for my constituent, Mr. Dodd. Subsequently, letters of administration were granted to him, and he then found himself in the position that the Mr. Evans who toad brought forward the will which had been rejected by the court was staying on in the house, alleging that he had a tenancy, so that Mr. Dodd had to face a second action in the Queen's Bench Division for possession of the house, and again won his case on llth January, 1955.
The chief property, indeed the only real property, of the estate was this dwelling house, and my constituent was apparently the only next of kin—the only surviving one. He had reason to believe that he would have the proceeds of the sale, and by this time he had been involved in two actions to assert his rights. Then, it was discovered about the time of the action that there were other next of kin of another brother and a sister. When the dwelling house was ultimately sold, at a price which brought the gross estate to £1,588 12s. Id., after the costs of the administration of the estate had


bean met, it reduced the net estate to £1,387. Owing to the fact that there were two other next of kin, it meant that if the estate was divided £462 or thereabouts would form each third share.
The result of the operation of the Legal Aid Act, which we are considering today, is not merely that my constituent has had to pay a contribution of £48, or £65 or even £100, as mentioned in the table to which the right hon. and learned Gentleman referred. Not even will his contribution be limited to £200. Almost the whole of his share has been taken, so that he has nothing at all out of the estate. The other beneficiaries pay nothing. It means that even had he had no next of kin the whole of this estate of something like £1,300 would have been taken for the costs of the actions; and it has been of tragic consequence to a man who is advanced in years and has an elderly wife, who has had to travel to the Law Courts in London from my constituency—no light undertaking—for a four-day hearing in the expectation, the human and natural expectation, that he would receive something in the evening of his life as a result.
I think hon. Members will agree that this is an extremely tragic case. It is one on which I have had some correspondence, not only with the Law Society but with the Legal Aid Committee and my right hon. and learned Friend, for a very long period, and I mention this because I think it shows that some opportunity must be taken of remedying the defects of the scheme. It is agreed by hon. Members on both sides of the House who were here and who debated the original Bill that they did not intend such a tragic result as this. I am sure that they never contemplated that the result of a man obtaining legal aid would be that the whole of the estate of his next of kin would be used up in contesting a bogus will. Perhaps, he would not have contested such an action, involving him in this torture of mind, this long strain on mind and body which was involved after he had received a legal aid certificate.
I mention that case not because I think that anything which has been advocated by hon. and right hon. Gentlemen opposite would solve the difliculty of this

case, but because I believe that the scheme needs a different sort of examination to that mentioned in the course of the debate. With all its defects, I think this scheme represents a very significant step forward. Although its administration by the Law Society has been very well done, and although I think that the financial aspects have been very well carried out, nevertheless, I would say with some restraint and diffidence that this sort of case does reveal the need at some stage in the near future rather than in the more prolonged future for a re-examination of certain aspects of the original Act. I am sure that those hon. Members who sat on the Rushcliffe Committee with my right hon. and learned Friend, and those who sat in this House when the Bill was introduced and debated, did not intend it to produce such tragic consequences as I have outlined in that case.

5.25 p.m.

Mr. Frederick Willey: I intervene briefly in this debate on behalf of one of my hon. Friends who had intended to speak but who is unable to be present as he is attending a Committee of the Council of Europe.
I wish to call the attention of the Government to some cases which have been referred to him, but may I preface my remarks by saying that I agree with the hon. Member for Barry (Mr. Gower) that no one would complain at a careful scrutiny of the working of the Legal Aid Scheme. If there be ill-informed criticism I should like to rectify that by paying tribute to those who give a good deal of time, attention and devotion to the working of the scheme. It must be conceded by everyone—I think it is conceded by the Government—that the financial provisions ought to be reviewed as speedily as possible.
My hon. Friend, who has been in correspondence with a firm of solicitors in his constituency, wished to call attention to some of the cases referred to him. The first example he gives is that of a single man with an income of £6 6s. 6d. a week which comprises £4 4s. sickness benefit and £2 2s. 6d. disability benefit. He is living at home and paying board and lodging and has a small sum of money saved. Despite that, this man has been assessed at not less than £150 towards costs. He was obliged to pay £93 within 28 days


and, thereafter, £5 a month. I think the House would agree that that is an inordinate burden to place on anyone in those circumstances.
My hon. Friend's correspondence includes a second case where a married man, parted from his wife, has an income of £6 15s. from sickness benefit and other earnings. Nevertheless, he has been assessed at £72 payable in monthly instalments of £6. Again I think everyone would agree that that is an unfair burden to put upon that individual, and it makes the legal aid provisions farcical. It is the sort of case which entirely nullifies the spirit of the Act.
There is also correspondence regarding the case of a young widow whose husband was killed in an accident and whose house and contents was practically destroyed in an explosion. This young woman works for £6 12s. a week and has a pension of £2 2s. a week. She has two young children and pays a rent of £1 6s. a week. Following the death of her husband, certain insurance moneys and other moneys came to her and she has savings amounting to £330. Yet, as the solicitor writes to my hon. Friend,
You may be surprised to hear that the Assistance Board, when they considered this woman's application for legal aid,…assessed her at no less than £286.
In other words, they raided the only savings she had in the world. Again, I think we all recognise that if the Legal Aid Scheme works in this way it is not serving the purpose we had intended.
Finally, there is another case, that of a married man with three children, whom he is maintaining, whose wage is £8 17s. 8d. He pays a rent of 17s. 8d. a week. This man took divorce proceedings and his contribution to the costs has been assessed at £60. If people are to be called on to make such substantial contributions in those circumstances the scheme is nullified. I hope, therefore, that the financial provisions will be examined immediately, especially as I see that the Government in their Amendment to the proposed Motion of my right hon. Friend state:
…it is desirable to modify the financial provisions of the Legal Aid Scheme when circumstances permit.
It is unfortunate when we have a scheme which has proved a great benefit to poor litigants that we should get cases where

the financial burden is quite excessive for people in particular circumstances. I join with the hon. Member for Barry in hoping that we shall have a speedy revision of the financial provisions and ensure that poor litigants are not put in the embarrassing position in which some occasionally find themselves under the present arrangements.

5.29 p.m.

Mr. Charles Fletcher-Cooke: The Legal Aid and Advice Scheme is a fine social service and a remarkably cheap one as social services go. It costs about £1 million a year, of which about 40 per cent. is taken up by administration. I am sure we all agree that the structure of it is sound. We have had ten years' experience of its working, and the method, the bare bones, seems to stand up very well to criticism.
When it was introduced I was frightened that it might make us a litigious nation, which we are not; that we might find the courts overwhelmed with people straining at the leash to go to law, and, having been subsidised by the State with that end in view, slipping their leashes and rushing at each other in the way that some other nations do as a great sport and pastime. But that has not happened. The English remain an unlitigious race despite the opportunities given.
What divides the House today is. I think, the narrow point of priorities. I am sure that my right hon. and learned Friend is right in his order of priorities. It is absolutely right to bring the legal advice system into action and to extend legal aid to the county courts before we do anything else. Could he have had his way, I have no doubt that we should have all the other things we want at the same time, but hon. Members know that he and his noble Friend the Lord Chancellor have to battle with the Treasury on these matters, and it is unfair to blame my right hon. and learned Friend for not having done all the things which I am sure he wishes to do.
We must all advance what we regard as our own order of priorities, and I wish to advance three matters which, I think, are high on the list. One has not been mentioned today. It is that something must be done, and soon, for the non-assisted person who is held up to ransom so often by the assisted person. It is


a scandal that the State, having entered into this field, having "maintained," in the technical legal sense of the word—which is normally an offence—litigation in which it is not particularly interested, having promoted it for a man of small or moderate means, steps gracefully out of the picture when that litigation fails, leaving the unassisted person who has won his case to pay all his own costs, or virtually all of them.
That means that there is inequality of pressure upon the contestants, which is grossly unfair. It is a cardinal principle of civil litigation in this country that there should be some pressure, if possible equal pressure, upon the two parties to settle their differences, and the sanction behind that is the fear of losing the action and therefore of having to pay costs. That may be regarded as a rough system, but it has worked extremely well and has helped to produce a race of people which, on the whole, is non-litigious. But now, as so many people know, there is virtually no pressure upon the assisted person to settle, and there is every pressure on the unassisted person to settle where he has a perfectly good case which is 99 per cent. to 100 per cent. sound. As is well known, many commercial concerns and insurance companies have cases in their files to which little red tabs are attached to indicate that they are cases in which the concern is being sued by an assisted person and the case must be settled at all costs because, unless a settlement is reached, and even if the case is won, the concern will have to pay its costs. That is a most unhealthy state of affairs, yet, so far as I can see, despite a good deal of pressure, nothing whatever is done to reduce that inequality.
I think it would be too much to ask—although this is the ideal solution—that the State should pay all the costs of the successful unassisted person. That would be wrong, because that would mean that there would be no pressure on either side to settle. Both sides would be litigating ultimately at the expense of the State—although that sometimes happens now when there are two assisted persons. Nevertheless, it is wrong to permit that kind of thing to a greater extent than we must. But something must be done to equalise the pressure. There must be less pressure on the unassisted person and slightly more on the assisted person.
I should like to see some sort of scheme by which, say, as an example, 50 per cent. of the costs of the successful unassisted litigant would be met from the Legal Aid Fund, and that an assisted person should have to pay slightly more by way of contribution—not, of course, as much as the thing at risk, but slightly more—if he fails in his action than if he succeeds. That would give him some motive to agree to a settlement, whereas now in many cases he has none. Not only has he no motive to settle, but he knows that his opponent has every motive to do so. If the pressures could be somewhat more equal, we should get away from the unhealthy position which at present obtains.
The second and perhaps more trifling priorities which have been mentioned and which I think we should bear in mind are these. I follow what was said by the right hon. and learned Member for Newport (Sir F. Soskice) about the rise in the cost of living and the figures as they stand on income contributions. But I have to accept what my right hon. Friend says about the priorities there. But more urgent perhaps than those income limits are the "disregards." Disregards of disposable income could be linked to the National Assistance Board scales throughout. For mechanical reasons that would make it much easier than having to amend the Act each time. The officials of the National Assistance Board know what they are about. Excellent though they are, legal aid committees have no such experience about the way the effects and forces of changes in prices operate upon people with small means. I see no reason why the disregards should not be the same for National Assistance cases as for legal aid.
It seems to me that in the case of capital the disregards have gone seriously agley. At present, if a would-be applicant for legal aid owns a house which exceeds a value of £2,000, one-half of the excess is counted as capital, which to me seems very unfair. A person living in a house worth £3,000 today, if assessed on that basis, as he is at present, would be said to have a disposable capital of £500. In fact, of course, he has no more disposable capital of £500 than a man living in a house worth £2,000. There is an artificiality about taking into account the value of houses of relatively small


and modest dimensions of that sort, which, I think, should be examined again.
The same applies to life policies. Those worth less than £75 are disregarded, otherwise the full value of the policy is counted as capital. At today's values that is ridiculous. Something should be done in those peripheral subjects of disregards of capital and income because to the modest man costs in marginal cases would make all the difference. On the other side of the coin there are, of course, limits of income and contributions which the right hon. and learned Member for Newport has put forward with great force, but which must wait, I think, while these other things are put right.
Hon. Members on this side of the House have a special duty to regard this social service highly and to see that it works in the best possible way. We are always advancing—I think rightly—the argument that we should adopt legal rather than administrative procedures when there is any doubt or dispute about which should be adopted. That is our philosophy and that we constantly advocate. But if we do, there falls upon our shoulders the particular obligation to see that the courts are readily and easily open; because it is idle to urge people that they should come to court and look after themselves, instead of being "nannied" along by some bureaucrat. if in fact the sinews of the legal struggle are not open to them. I hope, for that reason. my right hon. and learned Friend will see that in his future battles with the Treasury he squeezes them for as much "lolly" as he can.

5.40 p.m.

Mr. W. Griffiths: I am glad that the hon. and learned Member for Darwen (Mr. Fletcher-Cooke) referred at the end of his speech to the opposition of Government supporters to administrative tribunals, about which we have heard on many occasions, and pointed out that consistent with that policy must be a change of procedure whereby it is made easier than at present for members of the public to have access to the courts. I do not go the whole way with the hon. and learned Gentleman about administrative tribunals, but that was a perfectly consistent expression of opinion.
I suppose that every hon. Member who is in contact with his constituents has been made aware that legal aid is increasingly not providing members of the public with those facilities for easy access to the courts that was envisaged by those who introduced the Measure. I dare say that we could all recite examples such as were put before us by the hon. Member for Barry (Mr. Gower). Perhaps the House will allow me, not to go to such lengths, but to recite briefly an example which I came across and which shows how this system is working under the operation of the present means test.
The case is one of a constituent, a railwayman, seriously injured at work. He believed that his employers, the British Transport Commission, should be held responsible through its servants for the injuries that he had received, and that it should be proceeded against. He was so ill-advised as to take the matter away from his trade union after he had consulted it initially. He consulted a solicitor in Manchester, who advised him, on the evidence, that he had a case and that he should apply for a legal-aid certificate. This he did, and the Law Society granted him one, after he had undergone the means test and had agreed to meet charges which for him, disabled and away from work, were very considerable. However, the certificate having been granted the solicitor, I suppose very properly, said that he must seek counsel's opinion. This he did. Counsel advised, contrary to the earlier advice tendered to my constituent, that the constituent was unlikely to succeed in the courts. In view of this advice, the legal aid certificate was withdrawn.
My unfortunate constituent is now faced with meeting the whole of the costs incurred up to this point. This seems an anomalous situation. At the very least I suggest that a proportion of the costs up to this point might very well be available to him from any kind of State scheme which is supposed to assist him in pursuing litigation. Had he been wise enough to keep the case in the hands of his trade union then, had counsel's opinion been that he was unlikely to succeed, the costs would have been borne by his trade union. The legal aid certificate having been withdrawn, my unfortunate constituent has to bear a cost of about £30, at a time when he is only just recovering from a serious injury, is just


commencing work again and is on a light job with a lower rate of pay.
This case is typical of many that hon. Members on both sides of the House have experienced. If I had not heard, as indeed I have, many other speeches from hon. Members that have persuaded me that the Act needed looking at again, my experience with this one case would prove to me that the Act is not working out as its promoters hoped it would, as a method of giving ordinary members of the public easy access to the courts in seeking to redress their wrongs.

5.45 p.m.

Mr. W. R. Rees-Davies: On the whole, I disagree with the last observation made by the hon. Member for Manchester, Exchange (Mr. W. Griffiths). The experience of those associated with this scheme is that, in the main, it is a success, and that the only matter for discussion is how the scheme can best be implemented in the future and the relatively small criticisms be ironed out.
I agree with the speech of my right hon. and learned Friend the Attorney-General that the Government priorities are right in this connection. I also agree with him, in particular, that it was necessary to go a little way into the past to strengthen his argument. The party opposite has not framed a really competent scheme, which needed to be carried into effect substantially at one time, and made it not very easy for the Government to decide the right priorities.
The Government are quite right in introducing at this stage, as the first priority, the scheme for oral legal advice. Oral legal advice is greatly needed in the constituencies. We are all delighted, because it means that practised lawyers will be able to take over their proper province, instead of people coming to Members of Parliament with their legal problems. It will not only be Members of Parliament who will have to suffer this in future. We shall all in this House be able to say to an inquirer, "Go and get your free oral legal aid. It will be paid for by the State. Do not come to me with these problems." I have no doubt that there are many able lawyers in my constituency to whom people would rather go than burden me with their legal problems, particularly as people can take a whole half hour with

the lawyers for much less than the price at which they are likely to have less than half an hour with me.
I believe that oral legal advice could be extremely popular. I am surprised that it has not received wider acknowledgement from the Press, although this scheme is coming into force next Monday. It is a great addition to the social services and a continuing part of the legal aid service which started in 1949.
The other thing which is rather surprising is that this House has never once mentioned or discussed, so far as I can find out, criminal legal aid, which is what I want to deal with. I warmly welcome the announcement of the intention of Her Majesty's Government to implement the provisions of Sections 21 to 23 of the Legal Aid and Advice Act, 1949, for giving legal aid in criminal courts. Those Sections make provision for fair and proper remuneration for those engaged in criminal cases, where a certificate of legal aid is provided over a very wide field, covering magistrates' courts, courts of session and courts of assize, and, finally, the Court of Criminal Appeal. The whole range will enable proper representation to an accused and proper remuneration for the work done. I would like to deal with a little of the history of this matter.
Up to the present there has been one law for those who prosecute on behalf of the Crown and a totally different standard for those who defend the accused. I plead tonight—and I think it is the first time the matter has been raised in this House—that we should stand on principle in this matter. It is within the terms of the Legal Aid and Advice Act, but none the less I would like this to be clearly understood and, I hope, appreciated by the Government and by all concerned, that representation on behalf of the Crown, that is to say, for the prosecution, and representation on behalf of the accused, that is to say, for the defence, should be treated alike and on the principle that what is right for the Crown is equally right for the accused. That is the right principle in deciding whether people ought to have legal aid certificates and the remuneration to be paid for work done on both sides.
Nobody would suggest for one moment that Crown prosecutions, whether in


magistrates' courts, courts of session or of assize, carry high professional fees, either for the solicitors who prepare the case or for counsel who conduct it. This has never been, for either solicitors or counsel involved, among the higher-paid work of the profession. Indeed, it is among the lower-paid.
I have brought figures of proof. They show that if a case goes to a magistrates' court and is not handled by the Director of Public Prosecutions or by the Commissioner of Police, but is dealt with by the police officer in charge, sent up to the Old Bailey and then handled by counsel there, the pay for the prosecution is 6 guineas. It involves having to prepare the case for that day. If the case is extended for more than a day and goes into two days, a further 4 guineas is paid, making the total 10 guineas. If the case goes on any longer it will not increase much above that. I am not saying that these fees are too low or too high, but that a standard or yardstick ought to be applied to the regulations for those who deal with criminal offences.
At present, the position is covered by the Poor Persons Fees and Regulations, 1953. I think that these are Regulations 1429 of that year. Under those Regulations the position is unfortunate and is having a serious effect upon the administration of justice. That is why I so much welcome the Motion of Her Majesty's Government today that they intend to implement the provisions of Sections 21 to 23. If a solicitor takes up a case in any court of session or assize, the fee to which he is entitled for the whole preparation of the case and its presentation in court is a total of £7 Is. 9d., a strange figure, arrived at because he is entitled to £4 14s. 6d., plus a 50 per cent. increase. If the case takes more than five hours and goes into two days the maximum which is then obtainable is a total of £13 10s. 0d. Thereafter, if it runs for three days or more, he is entitled to a charge of 4 guineas per day.
There is no other country in the world —I have taken the trouble to compare the figures—where the charges are so low, or where the work is done for such a small amount. It is not a satisfactory situation to expect a solicitor to be able to get out and prepare a case and work on it on behalf of an accused for remuneration of that kind. The result, although there

are notable and gallant exceptions, is that, in the main, solicitors will take only those legal aid cases in criminal work where they have to do no work.
That is to say, where they know that the case is liable to turn into a plea of guilty and they can put what is known as a "back sheet" around the papers and ship it to the member of the Bar concerned, who usually is a young man, and say, "Get on with it". They will take those cases; because probably they will involve them in no more work than seeing the client for an hour's interview, getting a copy of the depositions and sending the case to the counsel concerned.
Where the injustice arises is in the difficult cases. Difficult cases which arise in sessions, and, indeed, at petty sessional courts, are usually far longer cases. It is very difficult, and has been for many years, to find solicitors who are prepared to undertake and properly do the preparation of any long criminal trial because, unfortunately, no discretion is vested on the matter of costs in the man in charge. In the High Court, in a civil case, there is a taxing master and a wide measure of discretion in regard to costs. The arrangements made there are that the solicitor and the counsel employed are entitled to 85 per cent. of the normal fees. In criminal cases, however, statutory maxima are laid down and cannot be exceeded.
I have considered and discussed this matter with several clerks of assize and others of some experience. It seems to me that these men, clerks of assize and those in charge at the Old Bailey and elsewhere—men of experience and position—are well able themselves to be permitted to have discretion in considering what is a proper sum to pay. I invite the Government to consider giving them a much greater amount of discretion than they have at present. I am not, of course, suggesting that there should not be a definite maximum and that there should be a minimum, but within that I make a plea for a rather larger measure of discretion to enable cases which are long-length and complex to be undertaken by solicitors and counsel for adequate remuneration. The yardstick of that remuneration should be that it should be along the same lines as what is regarded as proper for a person preparing or presenting a case on behalf of the Crown.
I want to mention another matter. It is a plea for economy. If this is to be done, we must recognise that there will be a heavy burden of cost. Whereas, under the civil aid scheme, usually it is recoverable when the plaintiff succeeds and the Legal Aid Fund recovers money, in the criminal case it will not be recovered. The outgoings of costs for the solicitor and counsel have to be met and they are not able to be recovered from the fund. We have to be careful to see that people only obtain certificates in criminal cases where there is a real case of need. If they can afford to pay they should do so.
There is a difficulty here. The National Assistance Board is able to meet and determine the matter in a case. If I may say so, it is dealing usually with people of good character. In the criminal case, although frequently people of hitherto good character are dealt with, equally frequently people of abominable character are dealt with, people whose characters are so bad that it is a waste of time to ask about their means because they will always tell lies. In these circumstances there should be some sort of directive for assistance by way of circular from the Home Secretary to the magistrates, inviting them to be careful to ensure as far as possible that they grant certificates only in appropriate cases where there is need and that if need be they should examine, or cross-examine, the person under oath in the box to ascertain his real sources of income. That would provide the balancing factor we need before we go into a period of expansion of this scheme, which may prove quite costly.
Not only will the widening of the Legal Aid Scheme of oral advice be a costly element—far more costly than has been the present basis of litigation in the High Courts—but the actual cost of legal aid certificates being granted wholesale, if they are, to people who have to stand on a criminal charge must be carefully dealt with. I can envisage a great deal of trouble if people charged with dangerous driving, driving under the influence of drink, or with motoring offences of one kind and another are to try to obtain legal aid in the magistrates' courts. I have no doubt that in that type of case they would be met by a flat refusal by the bench, but it is quite easy to enlarge the scope of this matter without noticing it.
I think that the scope ought to be narrowed, but I hope that in bringing in the new regulations, which, as I see it, are necessary under Section 21 of the Legal Aid and Advice Act, the Government will make quite plain their intention to treat prosecution and defence alike. In doing so they would incur the great gratitude of many people for the extension of a scheme which, I think, is very soundly based.

6.3 p.m.

Mr. David Weitzman: I am glad that my hon. and right hon. Friends placed this Motion on the Order Paper because discussion of this matter is long overdue. I agreed with a great deal of what was said by the hon. Member for Isle of Thanet (Mr. Rees-Davies). I regret exceedingly that I had not the pleasure and benefit of hearing the remarks of my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Newport (Sir F. Soskice) and those of the right hon. and learned Gentleman the Attorney-General today.
I do not think it is a question of saying, "Look at your record as a Government and look at our record as a Government." Either the matter is one which requires to be dealt with, or it is not. It is no argument for the Attorney-General to say, "Compare our record with yours; we have done far more". What we want to do is to see that the problem is tackled in a proper manner.
I understand that the reply given by the Attorney-General to the Motion is contained in the Amendment. It is, "We are getting on with the job. We are getting on with the matter of giving advice. We are getting on with the matter of legal aid in the criminal courts." I am very glad that we are. With many other hon. Members on more than one occasion I have pressed for the implementation of the powers relating to giving legal advice and I am glad that at long last something is to be done about that. I am glad, also, that something is to be done about legal aid in criminal courts. I agreed with many of the remarks of the hon. Member for Isle of Thanet. It is time that this problem of legal aid in the criminal courts was dealt with, but that does not seem to touch the real grievance here.
No one disputes the fact that the Legal Aid and Advice Act in its administration has brought about a great deal of good.


It has been successful to a very large extent. There is no doubt whatever that a great many people have benefited under it. People who would not have been able to bring their cases and who ought to have been helped, have been helped and have brought those cases successfully. The record is very good, but that does not prevent us examining the scheme and seeing where the real trouble is.
The real complaint about the scheme depends upon two considerations. The first is that it is quite unrealistic today to treat cases in the way in which they are treated having regard to the financial limits under which legal aid is given. It is absurd to say that where there is disposable income of £420 no aid shall be given. I have come across many examples of constituents in very humble positions who have good cases and only moderate means, but who have been unable to bring their cases because when they approached the legal aid committee it was found that their financial position was such that legal aid could not be granted them.
The Government need not take that from me or from other hon. Members. They can get the statistics from actual cases. I wonder if the Government have ever taken the trouble to get the data from legal aid committees of the actual applications made to them by persons of small means, just over the limit, persons who have really good cases, who have grievances which ought to be remedied, but who cannot have assistance because of this very low limit. It is no good saying that this is a question of priorities and that we ought to deal first with advice and then with legal aid in criminal courts and so on. If this is an outstanding grievance touching the mass of cases, it is surely one which should receive primary attention.
There is a very simple way in which the Attorney-General can test the matter. Let statistics be obtained of cases where legal aid has ben refused. If we are right, if statistics show that there is a real grievance, surely it cries out for remedy immediately. My right hon. and learned Friend gave figures about it. It would not entail the Government in a very considerable amount from a financial point of view.
The second point is a complaint which has been made again and again about the

administration of legal aid, the contribution which is levied upon persons granted legal aid. It is notorious that in undefended divorce cases often the contribution a person is called up to make is more than a solicitor would charge if the person went to him and put the case in his hands. Case after case has demonstrated that. What is the good of a system of legal aid which says, "We are willing to help you; we think this is a deserving case. We shall certainly help with asistance in fighting the case, but you must pay a considerable sum "—often very large— "by way of contribution."
This is not limited to divorce cases. There are many others where large contributions are levied in that way. It is nothing short of a scandal that in many cases a contribution is levied and, as a result, the person is unable to avail himself of the certificate which is granted for legal aid.
Those are the two main grievances. I am very glad the matter has been discussed today. The debate is long overdue. The Legal Aid and Advice Act was obviously brought in at a time when we did not know what would happen about this matter. As an hon. Member has said, the country might have been flooded with cases as a result, but it was not. In the result it has proved a necessary step. I hope that the Government will think again about this matter. It is not a party matter nor one for political rancour of any sort. It is a matter in which an evil exists. Let the Government study that evil and do something to remedy it.

6.10 p.m.

Mr. Peter Rawlinson: I follow the hon. and learned Member for Stoke Newington and Hackney, North (Mr. Weitzman) as yet another lawyer. This has been a debate by lawyers with certainly one, and perhaps two, refreshing interventions by others. Nevertheless, although it is a subject concerned with lawyers and the administration of the law, it is a subject which affects many thousands of constituents of hon. Members on both sides of the House.
As my right hon. and learned Friend the Attorney-General said, it is estimated that some 85,000 people may well be affected. It is possible that, to their lasting regret, many people have to seek out


a lawyer, or are advised by a lawyer, or are even cross-examined by a lawyer. It may indeed be their misfortune that this happens, but it is one which often occurs in the lives of countless thousands of people in this country.
The hon. Member for Leicester, Northwest (Mr. Janner) rebuked my right hon. and learned Friend the Attorney-General for referring back to the work of the Rushcliffe Committee. But the work and recommendations of that Committee are the fount of this debate. They were the start of this legislation, whose task has not yet been fulfilled.
Few doubt nowadays the need and place of legal aid as a part of our social services. Previously there was always criticism of the scales of justice. One end of the scale was that the law, like the Ritz Hotel, was open to all. The other end was that of the tragicomic counsel in my friend Mr. Mortimer's play "Dock Brief", who saved the client who had chosen him by dock brief by making such a muddle of the trial that the Court of Criminal Appeal eventually had to quash the verdict of guilty. Those were the two extremes which existed before legal aid.
But in any debate on legal aid we should not forget or ignore the great work which was done by many charitable societies, some of a religious or quasi-religious nature, who did, and still continue to do, a great deal of work by assisting, and advising and getting lawyers to start to investigate cases. Their history as forerunners to legal aid is of tremendous importance. Nevertheless, those societies, such help, and all the charity in the world could not play the part of what was needed, namely legal aid. Legal aid has been generally welcomed, not only by the cynics who thought that it was going to be of assistance to lawyers who were going to do better as a result of it. It has been welcomed generally because it is believed that there does exist the necessity for help in a matter which touches the lives of so very many people.
However, this new system has not been perfect. I agree with those hon. Members who have spoken today of the immense hardship sometimes caused to those people who are never the rich and never the poor, to those people who are just outside the scope of the Act, be they

£420 people or be they £600 people, as is suggested in this Motion. Especially has it hit them in the matter of costs. If there is a nil contribution, then a successful party who is just outside the scope of the Act suffers the full impact of having to pay substantial sums in costs in order to defend successfully an action brought against him.
Moreover, it is bad for the law that there should be an encouragement to surrender to a bad case. It is not only insurance companies which surrender because they know it is cheaper to pay out £50 and settle a case. It is others who are advised that, even if they succeed, the costs will be in excess of £50 and therefore it is very much wiser to settle. Further, parties then are not so inclined to compromise when the spur of costs has completely disappeared.
Most people think that it is usually the lawyers who are not in favour of compromise. It is a fact with which most practising lawyers would agree that it is the parties who usually refuse to compromise, however much the lawyers may be advising them so to do. When the parties have got their dander up and are determined to see that their rights, as they call them, are ventilated, it is indeed a skilful solicitor or counsel who can persuade them to settle.
In civil cases 15 per cent. of the costs are subsidised by the practitioners. We have listened today to some of the hard cases which have been put with great sincerity by hon. Gentlemen on both sides of the House. I speak with very much less experience in this than can a solicitor, but I am very doubtful if the amount of the contribution ever deters anybody from litigation which he is determined to pursue.

Mr. Sydney Silverman: Oh yes, it does.

Mr. Rawlinson: The hon. Member for Nelson and Colne (Mr. S. Silverman) says that it does. It may be that he has experience of people abandoning what they believed to be just claims. I cannot believe that he or counsel whom he wished to employ would not act for them free if that really was the case.

Mr. Silverman: That is not the point. The hon. Gentleman knows as well as anybody in the House that, with or without a legal aid scheme, before it and after


it, there have always been members of both branches of the profession who, in a suitable case, will act regardless of fees. That is not what we are discussing this afternoon.

Mr. Rawlinson: Certainly. I intend to refer to that tradition in the profession to which the hon. Member for Nelson and Colne and I belong. It is a very long tradition which goes back to the days certainly before Saint Thomas More and which I was interested to see that that Christian agnostic, Lord Birkett, the other day referred to as part of his practice.
The contribution is settled after reference to the National Assistance Board. It is laid before the legal aid committee, which has to decide whether a prima facie case has been made out so that it can grant a certificate. The hon. Member for Nelson and Colne tells me, and I accept from him, that there have been cases of persons who have been deterred by the contribution. If that is so, they are very much fewer in number than we are led to believe. It is healthy and sensible to keep the contributions and assessment high.
I agree with my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Darwen (Mr. Fletcher-Cooke) that there should be a close investigation into the question of granting costs to the successful party. Like him, I think that a proportion of these should be provided out of the Legal Aid Fund. I think that successful litigants should somehow get back some of the costs which they have incurred. As the hon. and learned Member said, they have been brought into litigation because the State has been supporting the plaintiff.
Now I turn to the criminal cases, about which my hon. Friend the Member for the Isle of Thanet (Mr. Rees-Davies) spoke. They present different and difficult problems, because there the burden is borne by the practitioners and, as he has said, particularly by solicitors. It is very useful to consider the difference between the conduct of, say, a divorce action under legal aid terms and the conduct of a serious crime, say, murder. There are cases proceeding in the courts at the moment where the Crown in effect is the employer, where there are leading counsel, junior counsel and solicitors

employed on both sides with entirely different scales of fee. It is sometimes thought that there should be a public defender. If there is to be a public defender, as there is a public prosecutor, the public defender should have equal resources with the public prosecutor and pay equal fees.
The scale of fees is extremely low. I do not think that it affects greatly the distinguished advocates of whom we have been speaking a little earlier. They are advocates who have in the past given their services free and still do. But the main burden is on solicitors, and on junior counsel.
Take, for instance, the case of long frauds. There are very long-term frauds and there are very many before the courts at present. Much legal work in London and at the assizes in the various towns and cities is being held up by the tremendous number of these fraud cases. This may be due to the greater efficiency of the fraud squad, but what happens? The accused has a defence. There are perhaps 100 to 150 exhibits, running to hundreds of pages of documents. Many inquiries have to be made. The accused is somebody of no means and properly entitled to legal aid. The case may last three working weeks; it may last six working weeks. Who, then, will accept that brief? It can be accepted, can it not, only if it is on a basis of legal aid at the fees that are suggested, for something like three to six weeks, by those who have not other employment? I will give the scale of fees in a moment, but they are so low that they cannot attract busy practitioners away from their normal work and tie them down to one case lasting from three to six weeks.
The scale is very low. Under Statutory Instrument 1429 of 1953 the fee for the solicitor is only £7 1s. 9d. and for counsel £4 17s. If the case goes over five hours, the fee is increased for the junior to £9 and for the solicitor to £13 10s. Thereafter, the solicitor gets four guineas a day and junior counsel five guineas a day. The solicitor has to do the preparatory work. He has to draft the brief. He has to answer the inquiries which are made of him by counsel. He may have to travel far and examine many witnesses. Counsel has to prepare his case and be in court, and


so have the solicitor and his clerk. A tremendous burden rests upon them. I hope that an even greater extension will be made towards the assistance that can be given for those who engage in these criminal defences.
The attitude of the Treasury is perhaps illustrated by the Statutory Instrument to which I have referred. It says that counsel assigned under a legal aid certificate shall be given a fee not exceeding £4 17s. Then it goes on to say that, in addition,
if he attends from a distance exceeding twenty miles measured in a straight line a further fee not exceeding £1 14s. will be payable.
Even the route is considered. It must be directly by straight line before counsel is entitled to the generous £1 14s. extra.
Therefore, I welcome very much my right hon. and learned Friend's announcements with regard to Sections 21 and 23. The problem must be one of finance. Everybody accepts that. There are priorities and it is a matter of balance.
Recognition should also be paid to the extremely useful and important work that the trade unions do in organising the defence and representation of their members. It is a very excellent service which they provide and I should have thought it was one of the services for which their members were particularly grateful.
Balanced against that, on the other side, are the insurance companies. I hope that every right hon. and hon. Member is quite sure that he is insured against a slate falling off his roof and on to a passer-by. I sincerely hope that that is provided for and that the insurance company will look after him should that unfortunate occurrence happen. In much of the personal injury litigation, which is a very important and substantial part of the work of the courts, insurance companies represent, and pay for the representation of, defendants. The defendant is, perhaps, an employer, a manufacturer, or a driver of a motor car. Trade unions often represent and pay for the representation of plaintiffs, and both provide welcome means of legal aid.
I welcome, too, the oral legal advice scheme. There is no doubt that that will save a great deal of expense, quite apart from saving the time of my hon. Friend

the Member for the Isle of Thanet. Everybody in the House will appreciate the importance in any kind of problem of quickly getting advice from the expert, the solicitor, which may save a lot of heart burning and a great deal of money afterwards. The more quickly they go to the solicitor, the sooner we shall find a tremendous saving.
In my opinion, the grant of legal aid needs to be more carefully examined. Every member of the Bar can speak of those who, having been granted legal aid in a magistrates' court, drive up to the Central Criminal Court in the largest and smartest of motor cars, and judges often remark that the person who arrives at the bankruptcy court rather seedily dressed and riding a push-bike will turn out to be the creditor, while the man who comes in the most handsome Bentley is the debtor. So more care should be given to the granting of the certificates, in order that we can be quite sure that people do not get them under false pretences. In civil cases, there should be far greater inquiry made by the National Assistance Board to ensure that only those who deserve, and need legal aid, get it.
Also, perhaps a greater responsibility should be put on the legal aid committees. After all, they consist of members of the profession, and they have laid before them the papers in the case so that they can determine whether or not a prima facie case exists It is comparatively simple, of course, to make out a prima facie case, but these committee should have placed upon them the duty to go a little further into these cases to make sure that they are proper cases for legal aid. Above all, though I appreciate what hon. Members on both sides have said, the level of the contributions should be kept up, so that this social service is given only to those who really deserve it.
For those reasons, I welcome the Government's Amendment. It appears to me, although I have not great experience in this, that, for a change, the Treasury has been reasonably generous to my right hon. and learned Friend. Perhaps he was able to blarney the Treasury with greater success than did the hon. Member for Leicester, North-West who mentioned delays.
We cannot compare the legal aid scheme with the health scheme or with other social services. The position of


lawyers in this scheme, be they advocates or solicitors, is very different from that of medical practitioners in the National Health Service. They must always be available, ready and willing to challenge the executive. I do not think that it is pretentious in this House to say that the freedom to plead freely at the Bar has been the final freedom on which all freedoms are based. As I say, I welcome the Amendment, and I only hope that there will be opportunities speedily to go forward with the other matters mentioned by my right hon. and learned Friend, and which are foreshadowed in the Amendment.

6.28 p.m.

Mr. Eric Fletcher: I regret that I must go far in disagreement with what the hon. Member for Epsom (Mr. Rawlinson) has said. I put my name to this Motion because, for a long time past, I have been conscious of deficiencies in the Legal Aid Scheme as at present administered. Of course, I do not quarrel with the Attorney-General's recent announcement of the step being taken to bring into operation further Sections of the 1949 Act.
Looking back, I think that all of us who were in any way associated with the passing of that Measure can congratulate ourselves on doing a very important work of social improvement and justice. We can also reflect that some of the misgivings expressed ten years ago by right hon. and hon. Members opposite have proved entirely unfounded. I do not think that anybody would now wish to undo the work since done by this Act.
Our criticism of the present Government, a criticism that we have maintained year after year, has been of their chariness and dilatoriness in bringing the provisions of the Act into full operation. Over and over again, when pressed by this side to bring additional parts of the Act into operation, they have referred to financial stringency or to the necessity to have regard to priorities, or have made one excuse or another.
Belatedly, they have introduced this scheme for legal advice. They will now implement the provisions of Section 21 dealing with legal aid in the criminal court and with any matters not involving litigation. Those are all matters that are set out in the Government Amendment,

and we welcome them, but they are not reasons that justify the Government's refusal to look into the undoubted defects that exist in the administration of the Act as a result of the present regulations as to contribution.
Those of us who have had any experience at all of the administration of this Measure, who have had the experience of seeing people in need of legal aid, and have had the responsibility of advising them as to how they could obtain a certificate, are conscious of the thousands of cases which, thanks to this Act, have resulted in justice being obtained where it could not have been obtained before. What was, before the 1949 Act, a blot on our whole system of social justice, has been removed. Prior to its enactment, countless cases of injustice went uncorrected because people had not the money either to obtain legal advice or to take their litigation to court.
I differ also from the hon. Member for Epsom in what I thought were his somewhat harsh strictures on the work being done by the legal aid committees. He thought that the committees should be stricter in their examination of cases, and in their decisions. My experience is that a great deal of voluntary work has been well and conscientiously done, and I do not think that many hon. Members on either side would wish to criticise the area committees in fulfilling the burden put upon them, and undertaking their responsibilities under the Act.
Our reason for tabling this Motion is that we are very conscious that there are still a large number of deserving cases that, in our opinion, are quite improperly, and quite unnecessarily, penalised by the harsh way in which the regulations are framed, but which have, of course, to be administered by the areas committees. The hon. Member spoke as if it were rare to find someone who, because he did not get a certificate, was unable to take his case to court.
I have had some years of experience in this sphere. From sitting in my own constituency week after week, and from letters I have received from various parts of the country, I know that there are hundreds, if not thousands, of cases in which people who have a legitimate grievance or cause of action in Her Majesty's courts are deprived of the opportunity of having their cases conducted, and damages


awarded, perhaps, because of their lack of financial means, and because of the oppressive way in which the regulations are at present administered.
Moreover, everything that the hon. Member said runs counter to the very strong recommendations made by the Advisory Committee of the Law Society, in its Seventh Report—following similarly strong recommendations in earlier Reports. That Advisory Committee has the best means of judging where the shoe pinches, and I would invite the Attorney-General and hon. Gentlemen opposite to consider two or three of the specific cases that are quoted in page 40 of the Report. From my inquiries I could quote a number of similar cases.
Let us take, for example, Case C— a police constable who wants to make an application in relation to divorce proceedings. At present, his disposable income being £359, he is required to make a contribution of £101 10s. as a condition of obtaining a certificate of legal aid. One knows that, in practice, area committees assess an applicant to the maximum. Sometimes they depart from that norm, but in the majority of cases they take the view that the applicant should be so assessed, as circumstances may arise that could turn what appeared, prima facie, to be a simple case into one incurring some unexpected expense larger than that met with in the average case.
My hon. and learned Friend the Member for Stoke Newington and Hackney, North (Mr. Weitzman) pointed out that, at present, some applicants for legal aid for divorce proceedings have to pay substantially more than they would if they instructed a solicitor in the ordinary way. Over and over again I have advised persons in my constituency that they are clearly entitled to a certificate of legal aid. They have filled up the appropriate forms and have obtained the certificate, but have them found that, in undefended divorce proceedings such as those quoted in page 40 of the Law Society's Report, they have to pay £101 10s.
In the ordinary way, no person in an undefended divorce case would be asked to pay his solicitor anything like that. Very often they would not be asked to pay anything at all until after the case was over. The applicant for legal aid, however, has to undertake to pay a contribu-

tion, and to start paying it by instalments. The result is that people decline to take up the certificate because they are frightened of the amount they have to pay or, even if they do take it up, they abandon it.

Mr. Rawlinson: The hon. Member has referred to cases quoted in page 40 of the Law Society's Report, and to some in his own experience. Whom is he blaming? Is he, also, making strictures on the legal aid committees, or not?

Mr. Fletcher: No, the hon. Member has completely missed the point. I am blaming the present Regulations. The whole point of the Motion is to call upon the Government to change the existing regulations so that applicants for legal aid certificates should not have to pay the contributions which they have to pay at present.

The Attorney-General: Does the hon. Gentleman see anything about contributions in the Motion?

Mr. Fletcher: Yes. Let there be no misunderstanding about this. The whole object of the Motion is that free legal aid should be provided
where the disposable income of the applicant is over £156 but not in excess of £208, and to exclude from legal aid those persons whose disposable income is over £600 instead of £420.
May I develop the point and ask the Attorney-General to follow the argument? If, as I suggest, the existing regulations are changed in accordance with the recommendations made by the Advisory Committee of the Law Society, the result would be that, instead of the deduction being £156, as at present, there would be a deduction of £208. In other words, if the recommendations of the Advisory Committee of the Law Society were adopted in each of these cases on page 40, the maximum amount which any applicant for legal aid could be required to pay would be approximately £26 less than at present.
The whole object of the recommendations is to reduce the maximum amount which an applicant for legal aid can be asked to contribute, or, putting it the other way, to increase the starting figure from £156 to £208, bringing within the scheme people who now have a disposable income of up to £600. Obviously, the existing allowances would continue,


but the reliefs would start at a higher figure. The object of the recommendations is to mitigate the hardship which at present exists.
It is obviously a hardship that a person with very limited means, with a family to support, should be called upon to make a contribution of over £100 as a condition of receiving a legal aid certificate for an undefended divorce action, and the fact that such a person is at present called upon to make such a contribution very often results in his being deterred from proceeding with the action. This applies whether it be a petition for divorce or anything else. Moreover, a great many people naturally assume that if that is what it would cost under legal aid, it would cost more in the ordinary way. That does not always happen, of course.
As I said, in a great many cases it would cost them less, but one cannot really blame the unfortunate layman for thinking that, if that is the cost under the Legal Aid Scheme, he would have to pay even more if he was not assisted under the scheme. Therefore, the result which the Attorney-General must face is that a great many people, because of their inability to pay the very high level of contributions, are deterred from proceeding for the redress of their grievances. That is the burden of our complaint and that is why we want the regulations changed. That is why we want the minimum raised.
There is a further evil resulting from the regulations as they now exist. There is no flexibility in the scheme. This is not the fault of the Law Society, which has only to administer the regulations as they stand. The Law Society has a statutory duty, once it has decided that a certificate should be granted, to exact these contributions; there is no power to mitigate them because of different circumstances which arise after a certificate has been granted.
As I told the House, I know from my own experience of a number of people who have fallen into arrears with their contributions through no fault of their own. As a result of circumstances, people may have other pressing liabilities which mean that they cannot keep up their contributions. When this happens, they receive pressing letters from the Law Society and they become frightened. They

realise that they will not be able to pay the full amount, £100 or whatever it may be, and sometimes they have to abandon their proceedings in mid-stream rather than continue them.
This is the kind of case which is constantly worrying my hon. Friends and myself. It seems to produce such unnecessary hardship and misery, and it produces a set of circumstances with which I find it baffling to deal when, in my constituency, people come and ask me what they should do. As the regulations stand now, there is nothing one can do, and that is why we are asking that the regulations should be changed.
I do not want the Attorney-General to be pedantic about the terms of the Motion. I am not limiting my complaints about the present scheme to the precise terms of the Motion. I stand by all the recommendations made by the Advisory Committee of the Law Society. I hope that the Attorney-General will not say that there is nothing in the Motion about Recommendation 17 (c). I attach considerable importance to this. Recommendation 17 (c) is that the regulations should be amended
so as to make eligibility for the Divorce Department depend upon a nil contribution instead of one of under £10".
If there are cases where a person's financial circumstances are such that he just cannot afford to make any contribution at all in a divorce case, why should he have to pay £10? The right of members of the public to relief in Her Majesty's courts ought not to depend upon financial considerations of this kind. I do not believe that the cost to the Exchequer would be very great in carrying into effect Recommendation 17 (c).
We are concerned here for the humblest of Her Majesty's subjects. We believe they have just the same rights to have their cases presented in court as anyone else, if they have a prima facie case, even if they cannot afford to make any contribution at all. We think that the machinery by which applications are sifted by the area committees is sufficient. If applicants satisfy an area committee that they have a prima facie case for relief, they should not then have to undergo a means test, which, perhaps they cannot fulfil, as a condition of obtaining relief in the courts of law. I mentioned as an example Case C because it illustrates the


problem we are trying to bring before the House and the Government.
Case D is of a kind which is probably familiar to other hon. Members of the House, the case of separated wife with five children under 10 years of age to look after. She has a disposable income of £212—little enough if she has five children to look after. She wants to bring some action in the courts which she is perfectly entitled to bring because she has a prima facie case. She is asked to make a contribution of £28. In her case, in those attenuated circumstances, such a sum is beyond her means. I have known many cases involving widows or women whose husbands have deserted them, and the circumstances in this class of case are really the most pathetic one ever has to deal with.
Such women find themselves in intolerable financial straits. They are hard put to it for advice about how to go about the proceedings, and, unless they have advice, they are the very people most liable to extortion at the hands of those who are able to have legal advice. After all, the whole object of the Measure is to ensure that poor people should be placed on a footing of equality in having legal advice and knowing what their rights are vis-à-vis those who can afford to have legal advice. The gravamen of our charge against the Government today is that the regulations operate harshly, oppressively and unfairly on many deserving people in the most deserving financial circumstances.
The circumstances of the woman referred to in Case D are a very good example. The demand that she should, out of her small pittance, make a payment of 10s. a week for a year is quite sufficient to deter her from going on. If the regulations were changed as we suggest, she would be exempt from any contribution at all. As regards Case E, a woman earning a little more, with a disposable income of £308, I would like to see the maximum contribution reduced from the high figure of £76—high in relation to her income of £308—to no more than £50. I think that even £50 would be a substantial sum, and, even at that figure, it might be too high to enable her to proceed.
I do not wish to detain the House longer. I hope that enough has been

said to convince the Government that there are very many most deserving cases calling for spmpathetic treatment. That sympathetic treatment can be accorded only if the regualtions are changed. I do not want the Attorney-General to tell as that because of other reforms which he has introduced this should wait any longer. It is overdue for correction already.

6.50 p.m.

The Attorney-General: By leave of the House, I should like to say a few words in reply to the debate. I think that hon. Members on both sides of the House will agree, first, that this has been an interesting debate and, secondly, that it has been a valuable debate. It is a long time since we have had an opportunity of considering the various aspects of this social service which both parties took a great part in bringing into force. I am glad myself—and I do not wish to say anything controversial at this stage—that we have had an opportunity of discussing it.
It would perhaps have been easier for us all if we had had an opportunity for a general discussion on all the wide variety of problems related to it. Some of them we have not touched upon today—the question of legal aid for the tribunals of various kinds before which lawyers are now to appear if they have not already a right of audience. There is the question of timing and the question of when legal aid for cases in the House of Lords should be introduced. There is a wide variety of subjects which we have not touched upon today.
Naturally, attention has focused primarily on the Seventh Report of the Advisory Committee. The hon. Gentleman the Member for Islington, East (Mr. Fletcher) made more than one error, but I want only to refer to one at this moment. He kept referring to the Committee as the Advisory Committee of the Law Society. It is not. It is an independent Advisory Committee and I think that the House is indebted to that independent Advisory Committee for the work that it has done over the years in drawing our attention to particular facets of the scheme.
In the course of my speech in moving the Amendment, I drew attention to various features of the Committee's Report. Naturally, in the course of years, the emphasis has altered, as I sought to


show. The criticism started—and it is important to bear this in mind—at the very beginning of the 1950 regulations, passed by the Socialist Government, on the ground that in some cases the contributions demanded were excessive. I do not want to repeat what I have said already this afternoon about priorities. I would say to the hon. Gentleman the Member for Islington, East, who, I think, was not here at the beginning of the debate, that the Motion of which he was speaking in support is really far narrower than the matters to which he was referring.
The Motion itself is only suggesting that some of those who now pay contributions should be relieved of the burden of paying contributions and get free legal aid, and, at the other end of the scale, that those now outside the scope of the scheme should be brought in. There is nothing in the Motion which touches the 1950 regulations, which govern the amount of the contributions to be made.
I think that it has been useful that the debate has not been confined narrowly to the contents of the Motion.

I have no doubt that my noble Friend the Lord Chancellor will study the OFFICIAL REPORT of what has been said in the course of the debate, whether or not it has gone beyond the terms of the Motion or the Amendment, because I am sure that all those concerned in the administration of this scheme will find it valuable to consider, reflect upon and bear in mind the different points of view which have been ventilated in the debate.

I should like to conclude by saying that I am sure that the House would wish to pay tribute not only to the Advisory Committee for the part which it has played—and long may it continue to play it—but also to those who have given up a great deal of their time on the area committees all over the country not only to try to make this Act work as we intended it to do, but to try to secure that the social service which was devised operates satisfactorily.

Question put, That the words proposed to be left out stand part of the Question: —

The House divided: Ayes 230, Noes 285.

Division No. 50.]
AYES
[6.58 p.m.


Abse, Leo
Dalton, Rt. Hon. H.
Holmes, Horace


Ainsley, J. W.
Darling, George (Hillsborough)
Houghton, Douglas


Albu, A. H.
de Freitas, Geoffrey
Howell, Charles (Perry Barr)


Allen, Arthur (Bosworth)
Delargy, H. J.
Howell, Denis (All Saints)


Awbery, S. S.
Diamond, John
Hoy, J. H.


Bacon, Miss Alice
Dodds, N. N.
Hughes, Cledwyn (Anglesey)


Balfour, A.
Donnelly, D. L.
Hughes, Hector (Aberdeen, N.)


Bellenger, Rt. Hon. F. J.
Ede, Rt. Hon. J. C.
Hunter, A. E.


Bence, C. R. (Dunbartonshire, E.)
Edelman, M.
Hynd, H. (Accrington)


Benn, Hn. Wedgwood (Bristol, S.E.)
Edwards, Robert (Bilston)
Hynd, J. B. (Attercliffe)


Benson, Sir George
Edwards, W. J. (Stepney)
Irvine, A. J. (Edge Hill)


Beswick, Frank
Evans, Albert (Islington, S.W.)
Irving, Sydney (Dartford)


Blackburn, F.
Evans, Edward (Lowestoft)
Isaacs, Rt. Hon. G. A.


Blenkinsop, A.
Fernyhough, E.
Janner, B.


Blyton, W. R.
Finch, H. J. (Bedwellty)
Jay, Rt. Hon. D. P. T.


Boardman, H.
Fitch, A. E. (Wigan)
Jeger, George (Goole)


Bonham Carter, Mark
Fletcher, Eric
Jeger, Mrs. Lena (Holbn &amp; St. Pncs, S.)


Bowden, H. W. (Leicester, S.W.)
Foot, D. M.
Johnson, James (Rugby)


Bowen E. R. (Cardigan)
Fraser, Thomas (Hamilton)
Johnston, Douglas (Paisley)


Bowles, F. G.
Gaitskell, Rt. Hon. H. T. N.
Jones, Rt. Hon. A. Creech (Wakefield)


Boyd, T. C.
George, Lady Megan Lloyd (Car'then)
Jones, David (The Hartlepools)


Braddock, Mrs. Elizabeth
Gibson, C. W.
Jones, Jack (Rotherham)


Brockway, A. F.
Gooch, E. G.
Jones, J. Idwal (Wrexham)


Broughton, Dr. A. D. D.
Gordon Walker, Rt. Hon. P. C.
Jones, T. W. (Merioneth)


Brown, Rt. Hon. George (Belper)
Greenwood, Anthony
Kenyon, C.


Brown, Thomas (Ince)
Grenfell, Rt. Hon. D. R.
Key, Rt. Hon. C. W.


Burke, W. A.
Grey, C. F.
King, Dr. H. M.


Butler, Herbert (Hackney, C.)
Griffiths, Rt. Hon. James (Llanelly)
Lawson, G. M.


Butler, Mrs. Joyce (Wood Green)
Griffiths, William (Exchange)




Hale, Leslie
Ledger, R. J.


Callaghan, L. J.
Hall, Rt. Hn. Glenvil (Colne Valley)
Lee, Frederick (Newton)


Castle, Mrs. B. A.
Hamilton, W. W.
Lee, Miss Jennie (Cannock)


Champion, A. J.
Hannan, W.
Lever, Harold (Cheetham)


Chapman, W. D.
Harrison, J. (Nottingham, N.)
Lever, Leslie (Ardwick)


Chetwynd, G. R.
Hastings, S.
Lindgren, G. S.


Cliffe, Michael
Hayman, F. H.
Logan, D. G.


Coldrick, W.
Healey, Denis
Mabon, Dr. J. Dickson


Collick, P. H. (Birkenhead)
Henderson, Rt. Hn. A. (Rwly Regis)
McAlister, Mrs. Mary


Corbet, Mrs, Freda
Herbison, Miss M.
MacColl, J. E.


Craddock, George (Bradford, S.)
Hewitson, Capt. M.
McInnes, J.


Crossman, R. H. S.
Hobson, C. R. (Keighley)
McKay, John (Wallsend)


Cullen, Mrs. A.
Holman, P.
McLeavy, Frank




MacMillan, M. K. (Western Isles)
Peart, T. F.
Strachey, Rt. Hon. J.


MacPherson, Malcolm (Stirling)
Pentland, N.
Strauss, Rt. Hon. George (Vauxhall)


Mahon, Simon
Plummer, Sir Leslie
Stross, Dr. Barnett (Stoke-on-Trent, C.)


Mallalieu, E. L. (Brigg)
Popplewell, E.
Summerskill, Rt. Hon. E.


Mallalieu, J. P. W. (Huddersfd, E.)
Prentice, R. E.
Swingler, S. T.


Mann, Mrs. Jean
Price, Philips (Gloucestershire, W.)
Sylvester, G. O.


Marquand, Rt. Hon. H. A.
Probert, A. R.
Taylor, Bernard (Mansfield)


Mason, Roy
Proctor, W. T.
Taylor, John (West Lothian)


Mayhew, C. P.
Pursey, Cmdr. H.
Thomas, Iorwerth (Rhondda, W.)


Mellish, R. J.
Rankin, John
Thomson, George (Dundee, E.)


Messer, Sir F.
Redhead, E. C.
Thornton, E.


Mikardo, Ian
Reeves, J.
Timmons, J.


Mitchison, G. R.
Reynolds, G. w.
Tomney, F.


Monslow, W.
Rhodes, H.
Usborne, H. C.


Moody, A. S.
Roberts, Rt. Hon. A.
Viant, S. P.


Morris, Percy (Swansea, W.)
Roberts, Albert (Normanton)
Warbey, W. N.


Morrison, Rt. Hn. Herbert (Lewis'm, S.)
Roberts, Goronwy (Caernarvon)
Weitzman, D.


Mort, D. L.
Robinson, Kenneth (St. Panoras, N.)
Wells, Percy (Faversham)


Moss, R.
Rogers, George (Kensington, N.)
Wells, William (Walsall, N.)


Moyle, A.
Ross, William
White, Mrs. Eirene (E. Flint)


Mulley, F. W.
Royle, C.
White, Henry (Derbyshire, N. E.)


Neal, Harold (Bolsover)
Shinwell, Rt. Hon. E.
Wilcock, Group Capt. C. A. B.


Noel-Baker, Francis (Swindon)
Shurmer, P. L. E.
Wilkins, W. A.


Noel-Baker, Rt. Hon. P. (Derby, S.)
Silverman, Julius (Aston)
Willey, Frederick


O'Brien, Sir Thomas
Silverman, Sydney (Nelson)
Williams, David (Neath)


Oliver, G. H.
Skeffington, A. M.
Williams, W. R. (Openshaw)


Oram, A. E.
Slater, Mrs. H. (Stoke, N.)
Willis, Eustace (Edinburgh, E.)


Oswald, T.
Slater, J. (Sedgefield)
Wilson, Rt. Hon. Harold (Huyton)


Owen, W. J.
Smith, Ellis (Stoke, S.)
Winterbottom, Richard


Paget, R. T.
Snow, J. W.
Woodburn, Rt. Hon. A.


Paling, Rt. Hon. W. (Dearne Valley)
Sorensen, R. W.
Woof, R. E.


Pannell, Charles (Leeds, W.)
Soskice, Rt. Hon. Sir Frank
Yates, V, (Ladywood)


Pargiter, G. A.
Sparks, J. A.
Younger, Rt. Hon. K.


Parkin, B. T.
Spriggs, Leslie
Zilliacus, K.


Paton, John
Steele, T.



Pearson, A.
Stewart, Michael (Fulham)
TELLERS FOR THE AYES:




Mr. Deer and Mr. Simmons.




NOES


Agnew, Sir Peter
Conant, Maj. Sir Roger
Gough, C. F. H.


Aitken, W. T.
Cooke, Robert
Cower, H. R.


Allan, R. A. (Paddington, S.)
Cooper-Key, E. M.
Graham, Sir Fergus


Alport, C. J. M.
Cordeaux, Lt.-Col. J. K.
Grant, Rt. Hon. W. (Woodside)


Amery, Julian (Preston, N.)
Corfield, F. V.
Grant-Ferris, Wg Cdr. R. (Nantwich)


Amory, Rt. Hn. Heathcoat (Tiverton)
Crosthwaite-Eyre, Col. O. E.
Green, A.


Anstruther-Gray, Major Sir William
Crowder, Sir John (Finchley)
Gresham Cooke, R.


Arbuthnot, John
Crowder, Petre (Ruisllp—Northwood)
Grimston, Sir Robert (Westbury)


Armstrong, C. W.
Cunningham, Knox
Grosvenor, Lt.-Col. R. G.


Ashton, H.
Dance, J. C. G.
Gurden, Harold


Astor, Hon. J. G.
Davidson, Viscountess
Hall, John (Wycombe)


Baldock, Lt.-Cmdr. J. M.
D'Avigdor-Goldsmid, Sir Henry
Hare, Rt. Hon. J. H.


Balniel, Lord
Deedes, W. F.
Harris, Frederic (Croydon, N.W.)


Barlow, Sir John
de Ferranti, Basil
Harris, Reader (Heston)


Barter, John
Digby, Simon Wingfield
Harrison, Col. J. H. (Eye)


Batsford, Brian
Dodds- Parker, A. D.
Harvey, Sir Arthur Vere (Macclesf'd)


Beamish, Col. Tufton
Donaldson, Cmdr. C. E. McA.
Harvey, John (Walthamstow, E.)


Bell, Philip (Bolton, E.)
Doughty, C. J, A.
Hay, John


Bell, Ronald (Bucks, S.)
Drayson, G. B.
Head, Rt. Hon. A. H.


Bennett, F. M. (Torquay)
du Cann, E. D. L.
Heald, Rt. Hon. Sir Lionel


Bennett, Dr. Reginald
Dugdale, Rt. Hn. Sir T. (Richmond)
Heath, Rt. Hon. E. R. G.


Bevins, J. R. (Toxteth)
Duncan, Sir James
Henderson, John (Cathcart)


Biggs-Davison, J. A.
Duthle, W. S.
Hesketh, R. F.


Birch, Rt. Hon. Nigel
Eocles, Rt. Hon. Sir David
Hicks-Beach, Maj. W. W.


Bishop, F. P.
Eden, J. B. (Bournemouth, West)
Hill, Rt. Hon. Charles (Luton)


Black, Sir Cyril
Elliott, R.W. (Ne'castle-upon-Tyne, N.)
Hill, Mrs. E. (Wythenshawe)


Body, R. F.
Emmet, Hon. Mrs. Evelyn
Hill, John (S. Norfolk)


Bossom, Sir Alfred
Errington, Sir Erie
Hinchingbrooke, Viscount


Boyd-Carpenter, Rt. Hon. J. A.
Erroll, F. J.
Hirst, Geoffrey


Boyle, Sir Edward
Fell, A.
Holland-Martin, C. J.


Braine, B. R.
Finlay, Graeme
Hope, Lord John


Bromley-Davenport, Lt.-Col- W. H.
Fisher, Nigel
Hornby, R. P.


Brooke, Rt. Hon. Henry
Fletcher-Cooke, C.
Hornsby-Smith, Miss M. P.


Brooman-White, R. C.
Forrest, G.
Horobin, Sir Ian


Browne, J. Nixon (Craigton)
Fort, R.
Horsbrugh, Rt. Hon. Dame Florence


Bryan, P.
Fraser, Hon. Hugh (Stone)
Howard, Gerald (Cambridgeshire)


Bullus, Wing Commander E. E.
Freeth, Denzil
Howard, Hon. Greville (St. Ives)


Burden, F. F. A.
Galbraith, Hon. T. G. D.
Howard, John (Test)


Butcher, Sir Herbert
Gammans, Lady
Hughes Hallett, Vice-Admiral J.


Carr, Robert
Garner-Evans, E. H.
Hughes-Young, M. H. C.


Cary, Sir Robert
Glover, D.
Hulbert, Sir Norman


Channon, H. P. G.
Glyn, Col. Richard H.
Hurd, Sir Anthony


Chichester-Clark, R.
Godber, J. B.
Hutchison, Michael Clark (E'b'gh, S.)


Clarke, Brig. Terence (Portsmth, W.)
Goodhart, Philip
Hutchison, Sir James (Scotstoun)







Hylton-Foster, Rt. Hon. Sir Harry
Mawby, R. L.
Simon, J, E, S. (Middlesbrough, W.)


Iremonger, T. L.
Maydon, Lt.-Comdr. S. L. C.
Smithers, Peter (Winchester)


Irvine, Bryant Godman (Rye)
Medlicott, Sir Frank
Smyth, Brig, Sir John (Norwood)


Jenkins, Robert (Dulwich)
Milligan, Rt. Hon. W. R.
Soames, Rt. Hon. Christopher


Johnson, Dr. Donald (Carlisle)
Moore, Sir Thomas
Spearman, Sir Alexander


Johnson, Eric (Blackley)
Morrison, John (Salisbury)
Speir, R. M.


Johnson, Howard (Kemptown)
Mott-Radclyffe, Sir Charles
Spence, H. R. (Aberdeen, W.)


Jones, Rt. Hon. Aubrey (Hall Green)
Nabarro, G. D. N.
Spens, Rt. Hn. Sir P. (Kens'gt'n, S.)


Joseph, Sir Keith
Neave, Airey
Stevens, Geoffrey


Kaberry, D.
Nicholls, Harmar
Steward, Harold (Stockport, S.)


Keegan, D.
Nicholson, Sir Godfrey (Farnham)
Steward, Sir William (Woolwich, W.)


Kershaw, J. A.
Nicolson, N. (B'n'mth, E. &amp; Chr'ch)
Stoddart-Scott, Col. Sir Malcolm


Kimball, M.
Noble, Comdr. Rt. Hon. Allan
Storey, S.


Kirk, P. M.
Noble, Michael (Argyll)
Stuart, Rt. Hon. James (Moray)


Lagden, G. W.
Nugent, G. R. H.
Studholme, Sir Henry


Lambton, Viscount
O'Neill, Hn. Phelim (Co. Antrim, N.)
Summers, Sir Spencer


Lancaster, Col. C. G.
Ormsby-Gore, Rt. Hon. W. D.
Sumner, W. D. M. (Orpington)


Langford-Holt, J. A.
Orr, Capt. L. P. S.
Taylor, Sir Charles (Eastbourne)


Leather, E. H. C.
Orr-Ewing, c Ian (Hendon, N.)
Taylor, William (Bradford, N.)


Leavey, J. A.
Osborne, C.
Teeling, W.


Leburn, W. G.
Page, R. G.
Temple, John M.


Legge-Bourke, Maj. E. A. H.
Panned, N. A. (Kirkdale)
Thomas, Leslie (Canterbury)


Lindsay, Hon. James (Devon, N.)
Partridge, E.
Thomas, P. J. M. (Conway)


Lindsay, Martin (Solihull)
Peel, W. J.
Thompson, Kenneth (Walton)


Linstead, Sir H. N.
Peyton, J. W. W.
Thompson, R. (Croydon, S.)


Lloyd, Maj. Sir Guy (Renfrew, E.)
pickthorn, Sir Kenneth
Thorneycroft, Rt. Hon. P.


Longden, Gilbert
Pilkington, Capt. R. A.
Thornton-Kemsley, Sir Colin


Loveys, Walter H.
Pitman, I. J.
Tiley, A. (Bradford, W.)


Low, Rt. Hon. Sir Toby
Pitt, Miss E. M.
Tilney, John (Wavertree)


Lucas, Sir Jocelyn (Portsmouth, S.)
Pott, H. P.
Tweedsmuir, Lady


Lucas, P. B. (Brentford &amp; Chiswick)
Powell, J. Enoch
Vane, W. M. F.


Lucas-Tooth, Sir Hugh
Price, David (Eastleigh)
Vaughan-Morgan, J. K.


McAdden, S. J.
Price, Henry (Lewisham, W.)
Vickers, Miss Joan


Macdonald, Sir Peter
Prior-Palmer, Brig. O. L.
Vosper, Rt. Hon. D. F.


Mackeson, Brig. Sir Harry
Profumo, J. D.
Wakefield, Edward (Derbyshire, W.)


McLaughlin, Mrs. P.
Ramsden, J. E.
Wakefield, Sir Wavell (St. M'lebone)


Maclay, Rt. Hon. John
Rawlinson, Peter
Walker-Smith, Rt. Hon. Derek


Maclean, Sir Fitzroy (Lancaster)
Redmayne, M.
Wall, Patrick


McLean, Neil (Inverness)
Rees-Davies, W. R.
Ward, Rt. Hon. G. R. (Worcester)


Macleod, Rt. Hn. Iain (Enfield, W.)
Renton, D, L. M.
Ward, Dame Irene (Tynemouth)


Macmillan, Maurice (Halifax)
Ridsdale, J. E.
Watkinson, Rt. Hon. Harold


Macpherson, Niall (Dumfries)
Rippon, A. G. F.
Webbe, Sir H.


Maddan, Martin
Roberts, Sir peter (Heeley)
Webster, David


Maitland, Cdr. J. F. W. (Horncastle)
Robson Brown, Sir William
Whitelaw, W. S. I.


Maltland, Hon Patrick (Lanark)
Rodgers, John (Sevenoaks)
Wills, Sir Gerald (Bridgwater)


Manningham-Buller, Rt. Hon. Sir R.
Roper, Sir Harold
Wilson, Geoffrey (Truro)


Markham, Major Sir Frank
Ropner, Col. Sir Leonard
Wolrige-Cordon, Patrick


Marlowe, A. A. H.
Russell, R. S.
Wood, Hon. R.


Marples, Rt. Hon. A. E.
Sandys, Rt. Hon. D.
Woollam, John Victor


Marshall, Douglas
Scott-Miller, Cmdr. R.



Mathew, R.
Sharples, R. C.
TELLERS FOR THE NOES:


Maudling, Rt. Hon. R.
Shepherd, William
Mr. Legh and Mr. Gibson-Watt.

Proposed words there added.

Main Question, as amended, put and agreed to.

Resolved,
That this House endorses the introduction by Her Majesty's Government of a scheme for oral legal advice; welcomes the announcement

of the intention of Her Majesty's Government to implement the provisions of Sections 21 to 23 of the Legal Aid and Advice Act, 1949. relating to legal aid in criminal courts, and the provisions of Section 5, relating to legal aid in matters not involving litigation; and recognises that it is desirable to modify the financial provisions of the Legal Aid Scheme when circumstances permit.

PRISONS AND DETENTION CAMPS, KENYA

7.8 p.m.

Mr. Arthur Creech Jones: I beg to move,
That this House urges Her Majesty's Government, with a view to allaying public anxiety, to institute an independent inquiry into the conditions and administration of prisons and detention camps in Kenya; and also to review the prolonged detention of men against whom no charges have been made.
The matter which I am raising tonight on behalf of my party is one of considerable importance in colonial administration not only in Kenya, but elsewhere. We do not raise the issues in a spirit of party polemics, but because of the mounting anxiety of people everywhere about affairs in the prisons and detention camps of Kenya. It is within the knowledge of the House that a Motion, urging an inquiry, has been signed by nearly 200 Members of Parliament. It reads:
[That this House urges the Secretary of State for the Colonies to institute an independent inquiry into the conditions and administration of prisons and detention camps in Kenya, including Lokitaung Prison, Northern Province, in view of allegations of ill-treatment received from prisoners and detainees in Kenya and allegations about the conditions made by former officers of the Kenya Prison Service.]
One must be conscious from the reports which have appeared in newspapers and from the correspondence which hon. Members have received that there is ground for investigation into conditions in prisons and detention camps.
It is our duty, particularly because the European elected Members in Kenya have not raised this question and pressed their Government hard in respect of it, that we should bring the matter to the notice of our own Government and urge them to take the action which has not been taken in Kenya. This is no attempt on our part to smear the security forces and the Administration, as has been suggested once or twice by hon. Members opposite. Because the Secretary of State has a direct responsibility in this matter it cannot be urged that questions concerning the administration of justice are outside his purview and are the responsibility of the Governor under the instru-

ments of his appointment. The Secretary of State has a responsibility to the British Parliament for the sound administration of justice in this Colony and for abuses which may arise in connection with it.
Moreover, we are concerned tonight with British subjects. It does not matter what may be their colour or creed. They are not members of a lesser breed. They are entitled to enjoy the standards of justice and administration which are characteristic of the codes in our own country. Let me also add that none of us here has any latent sympathy with Mau Mau or anything for which it stands. We recognise its bestiality and terror. But we have a right to demand that the Government, in their treatment of offenders, should not betray the standards which have become established in our own country and in other parts of the Commonwealth.
From 1952 there was a minor war in Kenya. I understand that in one year, in 1954, no fewer than 1,205 members of the security forces and 4,029 members of Mau Mau were killed. We are all aware that this was a conflict of some magnitude and that it necessitated emergency measures to meet a situation of terror, and in consequence no fewer than 88,000 Africans were detained and 18,906 Africans were charged as offenders. Abuses obviously arose in these emergency operations. There were excesses, and they were not limited to one side.
After a while, thanks, I think, to criticisms made in this House, thanks to the resignation of Colonel Young and his protests, and thanks to the criticisms made by Miss Eileen Fletcher, a much more constructive approach was made to the problems which arose from the emergency in the treatment of offenders, and in regard to the detainees who were swept up during the trouble. There was also the Heaton inquiry which carried prison reform a stage further. Provision was made for better training of warders, the extension of probation service and a better method of rehabilitation of persons likely to find their way back into the common life of the country. Also, prison camps were established, better conditions were laid down for detainees and, on the whole, substantial changes and reforms were made.
In spite of what the Administration felt obliged to do, subject as it was to


acute criticism, considerable anxiety still remained on the part of many of us as to whether fair and reasonable conditions obtained in the prisons and detention camps. These anxieties have continued up to the present time. Newspaper reports, correspondence which we have received and statements made by persons who had been imprisoned give ground for some anxiety as to whether everything is now in good order.
I turn to the last report on prisons in Kenya, in which I read about riots in prison camps, reports of violence against the prison staff, resort to corporal punishment three times heavier than in the previous year, of warders being killed in certain camps, of suspicious deaths in others, of mutiny at another detention camp, of prison officers being charged with beating up and of prison officers admitting that they were guilty of beating up, and of letters smuggled out of prisons telling us about rations, water supply, medical attention, and so on. This is another cause for apprehension and anxiety. This is an alarming state of affairs which seems to be symptomatic of something wrong in the present arrangements.
Questions have been repeatedly asked in the House about a number of the matters to which I have referred. We have always had a denial. We have always been told that our information is false and that there is no foundation for the statements made either in our main Questions or in supplementary questions. None the less. Members of Parliament have been left both suspicious and uneasy about the replies which the Secretary of State and the Under-Secretary have given. It is natural for hon. Members to ask: is the Administration hiding something? How is it that the Administration is so ignorant? Is their official information as adequate as it ought to be?
We have had these refutations and these dismissals of all arguments and all suggestions that perhaps something is wrong. All argument has been stonewalled. The reputations of officials and others have been impugned for a long time and there has been no opportunity for them to have their names cleared of the accusations which have been made against them.
Today, the evidence confirms the suspicions which have been aroused. That evidence comes now from Army officers, prison officers, prisoners, detainees and a host of other reputable persons whose character is high and whose truth cannot be challenged. In their statements, giving us the names of the persons who are involved and the dates and times when certain incidents have happened, they give graphic accounts of some of the dreadful things they have seen in some of these camps. These are not vindictive people carrying a grudge. They have nothing to gain by their revelations but, in the name of justice and of clean and good government, they ask that these matters which they report should be investigated. I suggest that there is a prima jacie case for investigation and for inquiry into unnecessary beatings, corporal punishment, inadequate medical attention, mental torture, laborious compulsory work, the refusal to prisoners of certain privileges and rights, and so on.
It may be forgotten that emergency regulations still operate in Kenya and that there are still 2,400 detained and possibly another 4,000 imprisoned for Mau Mau offences. It may be that many of these persons are dangerous criminals It may be that the life of a warder is extraordinarily arduous and very dangerous. It may be that some of the evidence that has come our way is false and possibly under cross-examination would break down, and that the witnesses who have asked to be heard are unreliable. But I put it to the House that the evidence is cumulative, is widespread and reflects treatment of a brutal character. I would say there can be no smoke without fire.
I have a variety of affidavits supporting some of the accusations which are being made and reflecting very gravely indeed on the troubles and difficulties in the camps. The first is by Mr. Williams Meyrick. He was convicted in 1957 and served in Kisumu prison and at Kamiti. In his affidavit, which I will not read to the House, he says that he witnessed the brutality of the warders, that detainees were sometimes hit on the head, and that prisoners were sometimes obliged to eat the tobacco which somehow they had managed to obtain. He says that medical attention was poor.
This is a European prisoner, and I suppose that a prisoner can probably speak


much more intimately about the conditions of prison life than anyone else. However, I will not pin my faith for the moment in his testimony, because undoubtedly it will be said that he is not a reliable witness. It will be said that he is not likely to be objective, having done time in the prison, and that his evidence may break down under cross-examination. All I say is that in this case an affidavit has been sworn making accusations of the character which I have indicated.
Then there is an affidavit by a Major Bird. He was a labour officer. He was convicted of some offence, although he protests his innocence and undoubtedly his case will come up in the courts a little later on. He spent his prison sentence in Kamiti and Kisumu prisons until September, 1958. He again bears testimony to the beatings-up and other brutality and the sadistic conduct of the officers. Again, I will not press this affidavit, because I do not doubt that some hon. Members will say that because he has done time his evidence is likely to be unreliable.

Mr. Bernard Braine: Will the right hon. Gentleman say on what charge this man was serving sentence?

Mr. Creech Jones: He was charged with some small theft, about which he protested his innocence, but he was sent to prison. He was a labour officer and a servant of the Government whose character on appointment was beyond reproach.

Mr. James Callaghan: Is he never to be believed again?

Mr. Creech Jones: The third affidavit comes from Captain Law. He is one of those extraordinary cases of a person who gives himself up as a vagrant in order that he should be repatriated to this country. He was detained for five months at Kamiti new prison. More will be heard of his case, and I do not want to argue about the detention under the vagrancy laws. Again this man, a European, bears testimony to the fact that in the prison he witnessed arbitrary floggings. He saw brutal treatment by the warders and many things of a sadistic character to which he strongly objected.
There is another affidavit sworn by Mr. Victor Shuter, who was a principal officer

in the Kenya Prison Service. He was appointed in 1955, and he is now awaiting his retirement. He performed his prison service in three of the principal prisons and prison camps in Kenya. I ask hon. Members opposite to note that what he has to say is confirmed by other prison officers as well as by one of the prison chaplains. His affidavit is now with the Kenya Government, and inquiries are being made. He describes the most revolting and humiliating treatment in Maryani detention camp. He points out that collective punishments are imposed on the detainees and that arbitrary beatings are also given.
There is also a great deal of evidence coming from other camps and other prisons with which I will not now bother the House, but it is perfectly clear that the protests I have mentioned have brought no action whatever from those in authority. The protests have been made on the spot to responsible officials, but nothing has happened as a result Protests have also been made by prisoners. Many prisoners today refuse, because of threats and intimidation, to carry their protests further. Likewise, the warders are often insufficiently trained and insufficiently experienced, and sometimes seem to lack humanity in their treatment of the people in their control. It is admitted that supervision of what goes on in these establishments is altogether inadequate.
When asked to look at the broad problem, the Secretary of State has refused to alter the system of visiting magistrates. He has said that it is good enough for the district officer, or the provincial commissioner, when he can, to visit the prisons in his district. Moreover, the right hon. Gentleman has also refused to allow African Members of Parliament themselves to go to the camps to see what is going on and to meet some of the people they know.
When the Lokitaung letter came to light the Secretary of State was disposed to argue in a somewhat ill-informed way on knowledge supplied to him by the Colonial Secretary in Kenya, that the allegations contained in that letter, which was smuggled out of Lokitaung, were false and altogether without foundation. The method employed is immediately to discredit the persons making complaints by referring to their alleged characters.


However, in this case the Secretary of State was obliged to admit that there was room for more regular visits to the camp and for better arrangements for visiting magistrates.
The last piece of evidence which I shall put to the House has been provided by the Secretary of State himself. I will leave this case to be argued by my hon. Friend the Member for Blackburn (Mrs. Castle) who I hope may have the opportunity to catch your eye, Mr. Speaker. She has drawn attention to the case of Kabugi Njuma who was brutally assaulted with three others at Agathi camp, an assault which resulted in his death. For all we know similar brutal assaults have resulted in other deaths. Certainly other people have died.
At first, the Secretary of State said that there was no truth whatsoever in the statement that the deceased had been beaten up. At the inquest, the resident magistrate said that death was due to natural causes—a rather perfunctory inquest, since it was subsequently testified that death was due to a brutal beating up. On being pressed still further, the Secretary of State was obliged to write to my hon. Friend and to say that his report was inaccurate and that he had been misled. A prosecution follows and an inquiry is now being held into the lack of responsible supervision.
Here is an admission by the Secretary of State of inadequate supervision as well as inadequate information about some of the events to which his attention had been drawn. Had my hon. Friend not persisted with the Secretary of State in discovering the causes of this man's death the case would certainly not have come to light. One is left asking how many other such cases have gone undetected.
Speaking with the responsibility of an ex-Secretary of State for the Colonies, I say that with so much prima facie evidence of trouble, disorder and wretched conditions in many of these camps, I would have ordered an independent investigation right away. I cannot see what reasons there are for refusing such an inquiry when such evidence is to hand. Our good name is involved.

Mr. R. T. Paget: I think that this is the sixth case of which I am aware where no murder charge has

been brought. To speak on general lines, each time one is told that it is very unfortunate and that a man did fire a revolver but, unfortunately, the damage done to the heart of the deceased was such that it was impossible for the doctor to say that the heart might not previously have had some natural defect from which the chap might have died, and that therefore a charge of murder cannot be brought and the Government are very reluctantly obliged to accept the plea of common assault. It is about the sixth time that that has happened, and it is one of the things on which we want an explanation.

Mr. Creech Jones: Yes. In regard to the last case, I would hope that my hon. Friend the Member for Blackburn will be able to describe what is now taking place, the charges that are made and the inquiries going on, so that we shall know how the matter is being handled.
What I really want to say is that, on the evidence which has been forthcoming, there is a prima facie case for an inquiry. Our good name is concerned, our respect for the rule of law and the vital importance of clean administration and clearing up the reputations of the people who are involved. We cannot condone cruelty and irregular and illegal practices against British subjects or anyone else, whatever their race, order or colour.
If this House is so sensitive as it was last week in regard to the Scottish case of John Waters, I cannot conceive how the slightest objection can be made in a matter such as this, where the facts are so alarming and where all the cases are of an infinitely worse character. This House was content recently, when the Home Secretary appointed a Commission in regard to Walton Prison, to accept the report of the investigating commission. Likewise, I think it is imperative that, if our good name is to stand, an independent inquiry should take place now into all these events in Kenya.
My last point is in regard to the last sentence of the Motion, which is concerned with the continued detention of Africans under the emergency regulations. Many people have been detained without any charge against them whatsoever, and this is repugnant to our own idea of civil liberty. Of the 2,400 detained, no fewer than 808 have been detained for four years and more, and in a large


number of cases charges in the courts have broken down and there has been no case for the men to answer. Indeed, in some of the courts where they have been charged they have been completely acquitted.
None the less, these men languish in prison camp, and the Under-Secretary, replying the other day, said that we had released 80,000 detainees. That is no answer whatsoever in respect of those now detained. We well recollect that tens of thousands of detainees were swept up in the streets of Nairobi, that nothing was charged against them and that they were under no suspicion whatever. To argue now that because we released these people who were swept up without any charge and with no suspicion whatever there is some justification for keeping these 2,400 still in detention is an argument which I just do not understand.
The Under-Secretary himself, trying to justify his action or the action of the Government, said that the Government were still, after four years, reviewing these cases and that they hoped to release them as soon as it was socially ripe, but that they should not move too fast or prematurely in the release of irreconcilable elements. There are other categories, however, people doing short time, people who have been placed under restraint, sometimes for ten years, sometimes for eight years, but, in any case, it seems to me that in all this, being repugnant to our conception of civil liberty, more urgent action should be taken.
Its continuance is offensive, because it harbours racial bitterness. It provides examples, which are used against us, when hon. Members here complain both about certain things happening in Ghana, and about things happening in the Union of South Africa. It is repugnant to our idea of justice that this state of things should continue. Therefore, I urge the Government to give attention to this aspect of affairs in Kenya, and to see whether something cannot be done to bring out of restraint these hundreds or thousands of men who for years have been behind the wire of the concentration prisons.
Finally, there is no desire on our part to denigrate the administration of Kenya, but I do submit that from what I have said there is sufficient evidence for an independent investigation. I have put the

case without referring to names, but if hon. Members want them I can give them literally scores of names in respect of the accusations and the statements which have been made and the affidavits which have been sworn. The evidence is concrete enough, with names, times and places of actual happenings. [Interruption.]I have the information here, but, because of the obvious fact that in using names people have no opportunity of reply, I have excluded from my speech altogether names and other particulars about them.
I have not tried to introduce sensational incidents. I have tried to give the House soberly and fairly the facts as they have been revealed to us, and I submit that it is no longer possible for the Government to shelter behind the complacency of the Governor of Kenya and that it is no longer possible for them to adopt an ostrich-like attitude in regard to the cases that have come to the notice of the Government.
We therefore ask for an independent, judicial inquiry, and we want that inquiry to have the right to obtain evidence, to secure the attendance of witnesses, in order that all these facts should be sifted. Our only desire is to serve the best interests of justice in Kenya. We have no desire whatever to smear or to throw mud at the administration, the security forces or anybody else. We ask for an independent inquiry into the whole of this evidence. The evidence is there, and I am convinced that if that evidence is closely examined, it may be possible that reforms may follow, and that some of the conditions of which I have complained may be remedied.

7.50 p.m.

Lord Balniel: I do not wish to speak for long because the time available for this debate is short and there are a number of other hon. Members who wish to speak. I shall be brief because the Motion before us has arisen out of a whole series of specific allegations which it is extraordinarily difficult for a backbench Member to test in order to discover the truth or worthlessness of them. We do not know the worth of the informants whose names the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Wakefield (Mr. Creech Jones) has referred to.
We can only assume that in making these allegations—may I say, incidentally


that allegations are different from "evidence" which was the word he was using—the right hon. Gentleman has taken every step in his power to check their truth, because they reflect seriously on the character of administrative officers in the Kenya service and the performance of their duties. I thought the right hon. Gentleman said a dangerous thing when he said that there is no smoke without fire. That is a dangerous thing to say when making allegations against the honour and reputation of officers in Kenya.
In common with other hon. Members of this House, I have visited a number of these prisons in Kenya and have had the opportunity to make a fairly careful and detailed study of the detention system in operation there. I agree with the right hon. Gentleman when he says that a detention system under which persons are detained without trial is repugnant to our sense of justice and offensive to our democratic ideals. I feel that every hon. Member would be anxious that such a system should be brought to an end at the earliest possible moment. That moment is when it can be done without endangering society in Kenya.
We would also agree that when a country has been subjected to great strain and stress and terrible trials, and it has been necessary to have emergency powers to protect society and the State from disintegration, then it is extremely difficult to get rid of those powers quickly. I do not wish to adopt a partisan attitude over this matter, but hon. Members will remember that the right hon. Member for Wakefield was for a short time a member of the Government Charged with the responsibility of governing this country after the war. After six years of peace time there remained in being in this country 215 Emergency Regulations —[Interruption.]—if hon. Members will allow me to continue, I am not being partisan about this—and it is only now, fourteen years after the war, that there is a Bill before Parliament to do away finally with Emergency Regulations.
The situation in Kenya is different from that in this country. Only a few years ago the people of Kenya were involved in the closest approximation to a civil war that we have seen in one of our Colonies for a long time. It was not only a civil war

between European and African but one in which the Africans suffered grievously from the activities of the Mau Mau movement. It is a situation where the emergency still continues; where there is another secret society, the K.K.M., which is doing all it can to perpetuate the beliefs and disgusting faith of Mau Mau. Were any one of us asked by a young English couple going to Kenya, I do not think that any of us could place our hands on our hearts and say that there was no possibility of trouble starting up again in the near future. The situation in Kenya is worrying and perplexing and we mislead ourselves if we believe that the trouble is something which has passed and can be completely forgotten.
I wish to refer to something regarding the detention system about which little mention was made by the right hon. Member for Wakefield. The issue facing the Kenya Government is of wide legal and constitutional significance, whether a person should be detained in prison without trial. That is an important and a a major question. But when one is discussing the general principles, it should also be remembered that another duty of a Government is to ensure that the innocent members of society are protected from fear and from assault.
If the Government find that the only way in which they can protect society from fear and from assault is by means of a detention system, there is a moral responsibility on them to continue such a system. The innocent members of society have as great a claim upon the Kenya Government as the detainees. I was surprised that in his speech the right hon. Gentleman—

Mr. Dingle Foot: How can the hon. Gentleman tell whether the persons who are detained without trial are innocent or not?

Lord Balniel: I will come to that point in a moment, but before doing so I wish to say that what struck me about the speech of the right hon. Member for Wakefield was that he neglected to discuss at least half of the problem posed by the detention system. One of the great problems facing the Kenya Government results from the Mau Mau atrocities and existing during this period of the aftermath of Mau Mau is the rehabilitation of those people who actually took part in the Mau Mau atrocities; their rehabilitation and


the regeneration of their spirit so that they may once again take their place in civilised society. It concerns the rehabilitation of people who had reached almost the absolute extremities of human degradation. The right hon. Gentleman made not one constructive proposal about what should be done to help those people.

Mr. Paget: As one who agrees with the hon. Gentleman that there are circumstances, much as we regret them, when it is necessary to shut up people against whom no charge can be brought, and as one who has seen and much admired what has been done for the rehabilitation of those people, may I say that, surely, the fact that we have this grim duty upon us imposes a special obligation to see that the men we have shut up are not maltreated? Surely there is a great responsibility on us to see that these charges are independently investigated?

Lord Balniel: I agree entirely with the hon. and learned Member for Northampton (Mr. Paget). Of course, when these people have been shut up without any charges being made against them we have an extra special responsibility to ensure that the administration of the prisons is properly carried out and that the conduct and behaviour of prison officers towards these people is correct. I hope to show that every single piece of evidence from official sources indicates that the standard of conduct at these prisons is high.

Mr. Creech Jones: Mr. Creech Jones indicated dissent.

Lord Balniel: The right hon. Gentleman may shake his head, but behind him sits his hon. Friend the Member for Rugby (Mr. J. Johnson) whose words I shall certainly quote, because he gave a high recommendation to the prison service in Kenya at the height of the Mau Mau rebellion—

Mr. Paget: The hon. Gentleman can have my own recommendation. I have seen it and that is why I think that these incidents must be investigated.

Lord Balniel: I should like to continue the thread of my argument.
Having, in company with other hon. Members, visited a number of these prisons I have been struck by the way in which the prison officers devote them-

selves to the rehabilitation of the largest possible number of Mau Mau prisoners who have offended against humanity, so that they may be made fit and able once again to be received back in their own homeland.
The right hon. Member for Wakefield mentioned figures regarding the number of persons who have returned home. He mentioned that after "Operation Anvil" there were about 60,000 persons detained in prison without trial. All of those persons have returned home except for 2,400. It is a measure of the achievement of the prison services that not merely have these people been released but they have been reformed. They belonged to the Mau Mau faith but they are now accepted by their own people. It should be borne in mind that it is their own people, and not Europeans, who are the judges and who determine whether they should return to their own villages. This regeneration and return of about 60,000 Mau Mau is a very fine achievement which we should not minimise.
The hon. and learned Member for Ipswich (Mr. Foot) asked why, instead of insisting on holding these people in prison without trial, we did not try them before the normal courts of law. It is difficult to imagine how any prosecution could ever be made in the normal courts of justice in Kenya. One of the best known examples of Mau Mau massacre is the Lari massacre, and there is no possible way in which the perpetrators of that massacre could be prosecuted successfully in the courts of law, because every witness to that atrocity has been murdered. That is one of the reasons why it is not possible to take them through the courts of law.
There is an even more serious reason. If one of these Mau Mau persons is taken before the courts, if it is impossible for the prosecution successfully to lodge the prosecution, and if he is acquitted, then he will return to his village. It should be borne in mind that he is a practising Mau Mau, and the fear which the Administration have to take into account is that he will return to his village and once against infect the society there with Mau Mau beliefs.
May I turn to what the right hon. Gentleman said about the prison services? The Motion refers to" public


anxiety". I can only say that, with what I regard as a fairly normal correspondence for an hon. Member, I have not received a single letter from my constituents on the subject of the prison services in Kenya. There is one exception, and that was after the publication in a responsible newspaper of a letter from prisoners in the Lokitaung Prison. If hon. Members make allegations and repeat affidavits in the House without attempting to prove their truth, and if newspapers report allegations, then there is, of course, public anxiety, but every official inquiry which has been held into the prison service in Kenya has dispelled any fear that there were malpractices on a large scale. The hon. Member for Rugby and the right hon. Member for Rochester and Chatham (Mr. Bottomley) visited these prisons at the very height of the Mau Mau rebellion. at a time when one could well expect malpractices to exist. The hon. Member for Rugby wrote:
Overcrowding and lack of staff apart, the Prisons Department has discharged its duties well, the treatment of its prisoners is good and in its rehabilitation centres and camps highly constructive work is being attempted.

Mr. James Johnson: On which page is that?

Lord Balniel: On page 11 of Cmd. Paper 9081.
Two years later there was an independent inquiry into the prison service in Kenya. Its report was called" The Report on the General Administration of Prisons and Detention Camps in Kenya". This is signed by Mr. Heaton. It reads:
During my visits to numerous establishments, I found the morale and discipline of the staff were good and the inmates were well fed, clothed and housed. I did not come across any form of rough handling of inmates by the staff: this in itself impressed me for there is little doubt that many of the Kikuyu staff have suffered grievously at the hands of Mau Mau, and it is amazing that no serious reprisals did in fact take place.
He then went on to say that there might be minor malpractices but nothing of a serious nature.
In February, 1957, a deputation of the House inspected the prisons and studied the detention system in Kenya. If the House will permit me, I will make one more quotation, because this is from a Report which was signed unanimously by hon. Members from both sides of the

House. Paragraph 80 of the Report of the Parliamentary delegation to Kenya reads:
From our own careful observations and inquiries we are satisfied that the Government of Kenya and its officers have done and are still doing everything possible to make malpractices impossible and where they occur to detect them and bring the offender to justice. It would be ungenerous and unrealistic not to recognise this and to say that in both the administration and the field of law and order Kenya is fortunate in having the services of men of the highest integrity and good will.
This Report was written after the deputation had had the opportunity of visiting many prisons and after it had studied the detention system in detail. It was a unanimous Report and it was signed by hon. Members from both sides of the House. It was designed to be—and I suggest that the House will consider it—a very high recommendation of the administration of the services in Kenya. In that paragraph we are told that it would be ungenerous not to recognise the standards which obtain and it also refers to the fact that these prison officers are
men of the highest integrity and good will.
In conclusion, I can only say that it is rather sad that sometimes a few hon. Members opposite do not show the same measure of good will and generosity when they themselves speak of the administration services in Kenya.

8.8 p.m.

Mrs. Barbara Castle: For one glorious moment, when the noble Lord the Member for Hertford (Lord Balniel) began his speech, I thought we were to have his support in pressing the Motion, because he paid a very just tribute to my right hon. Friend the Member for Wakefield (Mr. Creech Jones) for the sincerity and honesty with which he advanced his case.
I hoped that we might have an all-party agreement in the House about the need for an inquiry into the detention camps in Kenya, just as we have over the Waters case. It will be a great tragedy if we are compelled to divide the House tonight on this Motion because the Government insist on rejecting it in a party spirit, because I assure the noble Lord that it is not a pleasant job for those of us on this side of the House constantly to have to raise these points in Questions to the Colonial Secretary or by the method which we have chosen today when all we


get are accusations of ill will, and on many occasions even of ill faith.
I believe that the Colonial Secretary owes this inquiry to many people. First, he owes it to the Administration in Kenya itself, because the best way of helping the Administration in Kenya and proving where it is succeeding and where it is failing is to have a ruthless, independent inquiry. The Parliamentary delegation whose Report the noble Lord read is no substitute for that. My hon. Friend the Member for Rugby (Mr. J. Johnson) would be the first to agree with that because he had not got adequate powers. He has very good powers of observation and intelligence, of course, but he had no legal powers to command witnesses to appear and to give evidence on oath, which is the only way to get at the roots of the allegations.

Mr. F. M. Bennett: rose—

Mrs. Castle: I should prefer not to give way to the hon. Gentleman. I have a lot to say and I do not want to prevent other hon. Members from taking part in the debate.
The second set of people to whom the Colonial Secretary owes an inquiry are the detainees themselves. Thirdly, the right hon. Gentleman owes an inquiry to himself because, if he refuses it, he will stand under an accusation not of complicity—I do not bring that accusation against him—but certainly of complacency and uncritical loyalty to officials. Not least important, the Colonial Secretary owes this inquiry to us. Many of my hon. Friends receive letters every week of the year, sometimes every day, from detainees and others on these subjects. I have a pile of letters here so deep that I do not know where to store them in the limited space which is made available to us in the Palace of Westminster.
We get these letters every day. What are we to do about them? Are we to ignore them when pleas of ill-treatment come with circumstantial evidence, with names, dates and details, with men signing their names and, therefore, risking punishment for having written and made specific allegations, letters which repeat charges of a similar kind in a pattern which has become almost monotonously regular over the past four years? What are we to do? We must take some action. We should be failing as a colonial Power if we did

not take some action. But what do we get? Not only do we get allegations inside this House of mischief making, but we get allegations of the same character outside the House for party political purposes.
The Colonial Secretary owes this inquiry, if to nobody else, to me. In September last year when I came back from Cyprus he made a speech at Felixstowe to a cheering Conservative Party audience. The speech was reported all over the Commonwealth. Cuttings of it have been sent back to me from the four quarters of the globe. I have here a report which reads:
Mr. Lennox-Boyd said that he had previous experience of the practices of Mrs. Castle and remembered 'her habit of coming out with unsupported charges against British people in Kenya'.
The Colonial Secretary has a duty to people he attacks like that, people who act in good faith on these issues to enable us to get at the facts in a way that we cannot from him and in a way that no Parliamentary delegation can do but only an independent judicial inquiry can do.
On a number of occasions hon. Friends and I have raised details of complaints in the House and have proved that the complaints were not trivial and not unsubstantiated. We have had proof and verification time and time again. We had it over the Kaman Kichina case. I then raised the question of a district officer whose behaviour, in my opinion, was incompatible with his office, and as a result of a disciplinary inquiry the Colonial Secretary had him removed. So that was not an "unsupported charge."
I am glad of the opportunity to speak tonight, for I think we have in the case of Kabugi, son of Nguma, an absolutely classic example of our problem. We have proof that these charges are not unsupported and not frivolous. This case lends serious support to our fears that such things may indeed be widespread. I received a letter dated 15th September from some detainees at Aguthi Special Detention Camp. I have received so many such letters that I simply have not the time to deal with them all. I often send them to the Colonial Secretary so that he may make inquiries. I do not think he is terribly grateful for this courtesy. I hesitated to send him this letter, but it bore the heading:
Death of detainees through beating.


It contains such specific allegations as to time, place and persons that I felt I could not ignore it. Therefore, I wrote to the Colonial Secretary and said that I had received an allegation that on 5th September last Kabugi, son of Nguma, had been beaten to death by African warders in Aguthi camp.
The Colonial Secretary replied to me by return and said that he had heard of this case and was asking the Governor of Kenya for a full report. Six days later I got the Colonial Secretary's further letter on the basis of what was no doubt in his estimation a "full report", because in this matter the Colonial Secretary is as helpless as we are. I am not accusing the right hon. Gentleman of being a conspirator. I believe that if he were to see these things with his own eyes he would be the first to be horrified and to refuse to condone them. However, he has to work through a long chain of command, and so has the Governor. Even if a request for a report goes to the Governor, will that necessarily get to the root of the matter? I am not accusing the Governor of trying to sit on these things, but there is an intricate network of personnel involved which makes it extremely difficult for the truth to be got at. So it has proved in this case.
As I said, six days later I got the result of the full inquiry which the Colonial Secretary received from the Governor. I was told that the man concerned was one of a group of former Mau Mau convicts transferred to the camp on 5th September. The letter went on:
As is customary, immediately on arrival at Aguthi Camp they were put to work. Mr. Njuma was employed in carrying buckets of earth from a pit to an area which was being banked up some 80 yards away. After a short period at work he collapsed. He was promptly sent by car to the civil hospital, but he died en route. A post mortem was carried out by a medical officer and the cause of death was certified as 'pulmonary infection.' An inquest was held on 19th September, at which the Resident Magistrate, Nyeri, returned a verdict of 'Death from natural causes.' There is no truth in the allegation that the deceased was beaten by African warders at Aguthi Camp.
Another "unsupported charge" by that woman the hon. Member for Blackburn!
I knew that I was powerless to do anything. How could I do anything? I cannot fly over to Kenya. If I could do

so, I have not the power to get at the facts. However, I place it to the great credit of the Colonial Secretary that some weeks later he wrote again to say that he had had another report from the Governor correcting the information on which he had based his original letter. He said:
The cause of death was, in fact, certified as 'pulmonary infarction'. Since this is usually a secondary phenomenon instructions have been given for further investigations to be made.
I have consulted some of my medical colleagues in the House, because I did not know the difference between pulmonary infection and pulmonary infarction. I was informed that the first is an infection of the lung but the second is the stopping of the blood supply to a portion of the lung which causes that part of the lung to perish. I was given to understand that violence could cause such a condition, and that even if it did not actually cause it, a mart suffering from pulmonary infarction who was beaten would inevitably die.
The Colonial Secretary obviously went to a lot of trouble to get to the bottom of the matter. On 3rd February he wrote to me:
The Governor of Kenya has now confirmed that the report on which I based my letter of the 31st October was inaccurate, and I am sorry that I should have misled you. As a result of the investigation into this case, there is some evidence that Kabugi S/o Njuma and two other former Mau Mau prisoners, who transferred from Nyeri Camp to Aguthi Works Camp on the 5th September, were assaulted by an African district assistant …
The name is given but I will not repeat it.
… and by African warders under this direction, when they arrived at Aguthi.
The Attorney-General of Kenya has instituted proceedings against …
the warder
… on three charges for assault inflicting actual bodily harm on Kabugi and these two other detainees. The charge would have been more serious if the medical evidence had not indicated that the process of infarction, from which Kabugi died, apparently began several hours before his death, and well before the time of the alleged assault.
Both the Governor and I are very concerned about this, and although I cannot comment on it further at present, as proceedings are under way, I will certainly want to make a statement when they are over. The Governor has already given directions for an administrative inquiry to be conducted at once into the lack of responsible supervision at this particular camp.


I am grateful to the Colonial Secretary for that reply. I am also grateful to the Under-Secretary of State for the answer he has give me today to a letter I sent him on receipt of this. I have now sent the whole of this original letter to the Colonial Office, because it contained many other allegations besides those relating to the death of that man in particular. I am grateful to the Under-Secretary of State for saying that these, too, are now being fully inquired into.
The significance of this is that this case went the normal way of so many other cases which we have sent to the Colonial Secretary, and the original answer was, if I may say so, cloaked in the same complacent terms in which the Colonial Secretary has written to my hon. Friend the Member for Wednesbury (Mr. Stone-house), who forwarded to him the affidavit of Captain Law—the same kind of smooth assurances with which we have become familiar. What we are haunted by is the feeling that for every case which does come to light, every case like this one, there are others which do not reach us in their full form and reality. I hope that tonight we shall not get from the Under-Secretary of State a stale repetition of the answer, "This is an isolated case." How does he know it is an isolated case? There have been so many "isolated cases" that we are getting overcrowded with them.
The second matter I want to raise is one which my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Northampton (Mr. Paget) is far more competent to deal with than I. When these cases do come to light charges are made of causing" actual bodily harm", not even grievous bodily harm. Yet in this instance, in their original letter to me, the detainees say that, not only did savage and persistent beating take place, but that the warders concerned gloated to them over the death of the man, and warned others that the same fate would befall them if they showed any signs of intransigence.
It probably requires a lawyer to answer, but I want to know this. Surely if one accelerates the death of a man, even if he is in an already weak physical condition, that is murder? My hon. and learned Friend the Member for Northampton nods his head. This is what happened in the Kamau Kichina case which,

we were told, was an isolated incident. It shocked the Colonial Secretary who said he would see it never happened again. One thing which might be done to see that it never happened again would be to bring a charge of murder. Otherwise, we are helping to encourage brutality.
I have here, as my hon. Friends have, affidavits which have been sworn in an almost monotonous succession recently. The allegations they contain show there is more in all this than a piece of mischief making by an hon. Member. We have been receiving piles of letters from Africans in these camps complaining of inadequate diet, lack of medical attention, the fact that they are put in leg irons, the fact that there have been illegal beatings and illegal collective punishments—a whole catalogue of horrors.
We hesitate at first to accept these, because we know that these people are accused of complicity in Mau Mau, and we wonder. We wonder whether, as the Colonial Secretary said to me some months ago, it is all part of a smear campaign against the Kenya Administration. So we hesitate, but then to show these are not isolated complaints we suddenly get one after another affidavits sworn by a succession of Europeans who have been in these prisons and these camps. Some have been there as prisoners for various reasons, not all of them disreputable, but there are also affidavits from men against whom no criminal charge has ever been advanced. No criminal charge has ever been advanced against Mr. Shuter, for example, to whom my right hon. Friend referred.
Here is a sworn affidavit by him about Manyani Detention Camp. The interesting thing is that he was formerly a prison officer in Kenya. The noble Lord the Member for Hertford tried to suggest that there have been adequate inquiries into conditions in these camps. I ask him to read this affidavit. I will gladly lend it to him. Through page after page it contains examples of what has happened to those who tried to get at the truth when visiting the camps. Here we have a description:
At Manyani, detainees were supposed to be able to appeal against their detention to an Appeals Committee. Officers were given forms on which to record the names of those who wished to appeal and were supposed to enter their remarks at the foot of such form.


No check, however, was kept on these forms, and I personally know of some instances when some officers tore up these completed forms to avoid the trouble of having to fill in their remarks. In particular, I remember seeing the said"—
here a name is given—
tearing up a batch of such forms on one occasion.
This man, an ex-prison officer, is prepared to substantiate the facts before a commission of inquiry.
The noble Lord referred to the International Red Cross and to other visits which have been made. Mr. Shuter has got some interesting comments to make about this. He says:
When, on one occasion, we officers received a warning that Mariira Works Camp was to be visited in a week's time by the International Red Cross, the legless man and two others who had their arms in plaster were sent off with some warders into the forest where they remained out of sight until after the inspection.
At the same camp, he says:
Before inspections by visiting committees, which were only introduced in the second year of my service, detainees were warned of unpleasant consequences if they made any complaints. At Mariira Camp I heard such a warning being given by the said"—
and here there is a name—
the Officer in Charge, and more recently in October, 1958, I heard such a warning being given by the said"—
and here there is another name—
at Fort Hall Reception Camp. On one occasion at Fort Hall Reception Camp, the inspecting committee was carefully steered past huts containing men who had injuries from being beaten up, and was told that the huts were empty.
Many similar occurrences have come to light in a letter I had shortly after I returned from my visit to Kenya two or three years ago. I paid a visit to Kamiti Camp while I was there. I had a sense of helplessness at ever getting at the reality. One cannot stand there and just say to people," I think a lot of atrocities are going on behind those doors." I was told in this letter from this gentleman who had been a prisoner in the camp at the time of my visit that certain things were tidied up out of the way before I came, and he says:
After you had been safely steered away on the day of your visit there was a liquid celebration at which some of the European convicts were in attendance.
I can well believe it. I can well believe they said, "Cheers! We have got

her out of the way without her discovering anything."
There is not time for me to read more than a fraction of the evidence which we have, but here we have these affidavits sworn by these gentlemen, and I would particularly refer to what three of these say about one particular incident in Kamiti prison. They all make very similar allegations about what happened on the occasion when some Mau Mau prisoners were transferred to Kamiti three days before Her Majesty the Queen Mother was due to open the new Embakasi Airport. These men were transferred to Kamiti and put in the compound and locked up. Three of them contain statements corroborating what happened on that day. One statement says:
An order was given for the warders and askaris and riot squad to turn out. The following morning these convicts"—
who had been locked up—
refused to come out. They turned out in force, under the direction of …
names are given.
The other officials present at these beatings were … The victims were beaten into submission and when they came out were dragged and kicked. They refused to eat and each man was beaten with truncheons and sticks until he did. I cannot remember a day when beatings did not take place and I can name the Europeans and Africans who did it. I will give their names as sworn evidence before any court or commission of inquiry.
There are other allegations repeated in all three of the sworn affidavits.
Only yesterday, as a result of the announcement in the Press that this debate was to take place, I got another communication from a European who has just returned from Kenya saying he had some information he wanted me to have. I tried to reach him by telephone, but he is in Devon and is not on the telephone. We dare not ignore this succession of complaints. It would be intolerable if we did.

Mr. Braine: The hon. Lady says that we dare not ignore these cases, but is she not aware that these allegations are already the subject of inquiry by the Governor of Kenya?

Mrs. Castle: This is our whole point. Certainly there is an inquiry by the Governor of Kenya, but that is not good enough. It is putting the Governor in an intolerable position. This matter has


reached such proportions and has become such a public scandal that we owe it to the Governor of Kenya to take this responsibility off his shoulders. Independent people must go out there from this country and they must be given full powers to command people to come forward and to give evidence on oath. These men who have made these depositions to us have not been afraid to come out openly and risk their jobs. The have given their names and made sworn statements, which will not particularly help their careers. They have been smeared as we have been smeared, but it is intolerable for the Government to go on smearing people who are trying to do what this House has decided to do in the Waters case, which is not only to do justice but to show that it is being done.

8.33 p.m.

Mr. Bernard Braine: If an injury is inflicted upon any one of Her Majesty's subjects in any territory for which we here in the United Kingdom have ultimate responsibility and that matter is hushed up by the authorities overseas so that justice is not done, clearly that is a matter for us here. We have in the United Kingdom, and must ultimately have, responsibility for the good government and wellbeing of those who dwell in the dependent territories.
That this debate is taking place is a good thing, but that does not mean that the right hon. Member for Wakefield (Mr. Creech Jones), who presented his case with moderation, or the hon. Lady the Member for Blackburn (Mrs. Castle), have made out their case. I have been to Mariira and some of the other camps and I tried, in company with a number of my colleagues in this House, to follow with sympathy and understanding the ordeal through which all races in Kenya have passed in the last few years and the heroic efforts they are now making towards recovery. But I must say at the outset that the right hon. Gentleman failed to make any case whatsoever for the Motion.
I should like to get the problem into perspective. We should consider—I am forced to do this by the words of the Motion—whether anybody in Kenya should be in detention at all. The right hon. Member for Wakefield will know that there are circumstances of emergency

when detention can be justified on grounds that the lives and liberties of the whole people are at stake. In a critical situation in 1948, the right hon. Gentleman authorised detention procedures in Malaya. On 1st December of that year he told the House of Commons that since the beginning of the emergency, 4,700 people had been arrested in Malaya and Singapore and—I quote his words:
no specific charge need be made against persons so detained."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 1st December, 1948; Vol. 458, c. 1988.]
Eighteen months later his successor, the right hon. Member for Llanelly (Mr. J. Griffiths), also came to the Box and announced that over 25,000 detention orders had been issued since the beginning of the emergency, and 11,000 people were still held.
To the best of my recollection, the only people who objected to that course of action at that time, who thought such a policy was wrong—and who, incidentally, I looked up the debates in HANSARD—buttressed their arguments with charges of atrocities committed by British troops and officials, were certain Communist Members of this House who, happily, are no longer with us. Today, and this is the moral of the story, Malaya is free and independent. She is, relatively speaking, a happy and secure country, but this would not have been the case if the Government of that day and their successors had not taken a firm line in dealing with the emergency.
It can be argued that the situation in Kenya is not dissimilar. The situation in Kenya started with the proclamation of the emergency, the House will remember, which took place in November, 1952. Why did that take place? It was precisely because the normal processes of the law had broken down and could not cope with the rising tide of Mau-Mau terrorism. Murder and intimidation were the order of the day and there was a danger that the madness which had seized a large part of the Kikuyu people might spread to other tribes. The law courts could not operate, witnesses would not give evidence either because they were intimidated or had disappeared. In those circumstances, the detention powers were put into force.
When I visited Kenya first, in 1954, there were about 60,000 people held in detention, and I went to a number of


the camps. There were also 20,000 convicted of offences under the emergency regulations, making 80,000 in all. Most of those in the camps I visited seemed convinced that Mau Mau was going to win in the end. Hon. Members will recall, particularly those who have been to East Africa, the extent to which Mau Mau had corroded the soul and sensibilities of those people to a point at which, with the best will in the world, one despaired of winning them back to decency.
Quite frankly, I was pessimistic, and at that time it seemed to me that the problem was insoluble. Yet, looking back over that short period of five years, one can see now that without the use of these powers of detention, of intensified interrogation, of redemption through confession and work, it would have been quite impossible to have turned tens of thousands of sullen, fanatical Mau Mau terrorists into decent citizens. Now, 75,000 of them have returned to normal life. I met many of them on my last visit. What a different people they are. The past is behind them and they are looking forward to a constructive, new future as a result of the exciting agricultural change which has swept over the Central Province.
The interesting thing is that the sentences of Mau Mau convicts were suspended in order that they should take advantage of the rehabilitation facilities in detention camps. When I visited Kenya again last year I found a very different situation. I went to Mariira and to other camps. I found 80,000 detainees and convicts had dwindled to about 11,000, and they were going out into normal life at the rate of about 2,000 a month. I am not challenging the figures given by the right hon. Member, because he has his own sources of information, but I understand that there are now about 2,500 left. The important point to bear in mind about them is that 40 per cent. to 50 per cent. are convicts, people against whom a specific charge has been made. In other words, the vast majority of those who were taken in by Operation Anvil and elsewhere in the country have been released.

Mr. A. Fenner Brockway: Is it not also likely that some of those who remain are the best type of detainee? The ordinary method of procedure is to require a confession. Some

of those who are not guilty have refused to make such a confession, and they have continued to refuse. Many hon. Members on this side of the House know detained men whose characters are of the noblest and who have been acquitted of any crime but are kept in detention because they refuse to confess to a crime that they have not committed.

Mr. Braine: The hon. Member is entitled to his viewpoint, but he does the gravest disservice to the devoted band of Christian men and women who have been working in these camps since the beginning on this work of rehabilitation—men like David Warahui, the son of the murdered chief, a dedicated soul if there ever was one, the old Scottish missionary, whom I met there, who was a blood brother of the Kikuyu, whose name was Dennis, and scores of others. The hon. Member is doing a grave disservice to those who have been helping to save souls—because that is the essence of the problem. I beg leave to doubt that the hard core which is left—quite apart from those who have been convicted, in many cases, of the foulest crimes—are the lily-white—

Mr. Brockway: I said "some of them".

Mr. Braine: —heroes that the hon. Member pretends.
I confess that I was very unhappy when I went to Mariira. I do not see how any Englishman nurtured in the traditions of liberty of this country—certainly any Member of this House—could fail to be moved by the spectacle that I saw, and the feeling that there were many people there against whom no specific charge could be brought.

Mr. Callaghan: What is the hon. Member objecting to in the Motion? It asks that there shall be a review in respect of those who have been in prolonged detention and against whom no charges have been made.

Mr. Braine: I hope that the hon. Member will permit me to develop my argument.

Mr. Callaghan: I have been listening to the hon. Member for a long time, but I have not heard any argument against the Motion.

Mr. Braine: I have not taken anything like the time taken by some hon. Members opposite, and I am not going to be dictated to by the hon. Member for Cardiff, South-East (Mr. Callaghan). If he can bear himself in patience—which is not exactly a quality for which he is famed—he will hear what I have to say.
When the hon. Member made that irrelevant interruption I was on the point of saying that the situation which I encountered at Mariira—when I was accompanied by my good friend the hon. Member for Edmonton (Mr. Albu), whom I believe shared my feelings on the subject—gave me furiously to think. I was filled with compassion for these people, and I wanted to know why they were there.
The answer is simple. Among these people are some who did not hesitate to butcher thousands of their fellow tribesmen—never mind about white settlers—in the most savage and bestial fashion that one could think of. It is easy to forget, and it would seem from some of the observations which have been thrown across the Floor of the House that some people have already forgotten, that if we had let these men loose we should never have been forgiven by tens of thousands of loyal Kikuyu who withstood the tortures and the hellish persecution and terrorism of Mau Mau, and who remember, even if we sometimes forget, the Lari massacre of 1953, when 150 of their fellow-Kikuyu were slaughtered by Mau Mau gangsters.
I was not going to mention it, but the hon. Member for Cardiff, South-East has provoked me into doing so—

Mr. Callaghan: This has nothing to do with the Motion.

Mr. Braine: It has everything to do with it. The hon. Member has provoked me into saying that at Lari the top of a child's head was cut off in order that those foul beasts might consume the brains.

Mr. Paget: On a point of order, Mr. Deputy-Speaker. We have now listened for a quarter of an hour to the hon. Member for Essex, South-East (Mr. Braine). In my submission, he has not said one word that is relevant to the Motion. There is no dispute that detention has been necessary, and the Motion does not question it. There is no dispute

that most self-sacrificing and splendid work has been done in rehabilitation.

Mr. Braine: The last words of the Motion call upon the House
to review the prolonged detention of men against whom no charges have been made.
I listened with patience and respect to all that was said on the other side. I wonder why hon. Gentlemen are so keen to interrupt me. Is it that the truth in this matter is unpalatable?
My contention is that, if we had let these men loose, we would have proclaimed to the whole of the people of Kenya our inability to prevent vast numbers of human beings coming under the spell of the most perverted and filthy doctrine ever known to man. Further, if we had let these men loose we could not have started, let alone have completed, that dramatic break-through the barrier of poverty in the Central Province. We could not have carried out the agricultural reform which has taken place and which is now absorbing released detainees. If one goes anywhere in Kikuyu land today, one not only sees a transformed landscape but encounters a transformed people. All this has been recognised by responsible hon. Members of the House. The noble Lord quoted the Report of the C.P.A. delegation to Kenya. May I quote two short passages from the same Report. Referring to those still kept in detention, paragraph 95 of the Report says:
The policy which determines their future should be based on the premise that although detention cannot be regarded as a substitute for the processes of the law, provision will have to be made to ensure that such persons—whose numbers will probably be relatively small—do not endanger public security or are enabled to resume full liberty of action until they have renounced Mau Mau.
The Report then goes on to say, very properly, that the utmost speed in ending detention is required.
We are all agreed with that. I trust that when the Under-Secretary of State replies he will give us some indication as to what is in the Government's mind about the speed with which these Emergency Regulations can be terminated. Nevertheless, he would be a very bold man who would say that normal conditions, the normalcy envisaged in the 1957 Report, obtained in Kenya today. The right hon. Gentleman did not tell the House this, but a proportion of those


still left in detention are people brought in in recent months who are members of the proscribed organisation K.K.M. As long as that organisation exists, subverting with its intimidation tactics and its oath taking, there is danger. I submit that the conditions do not yet obtain for ending the detention procedure.

Mr. Creech Jones: The hon. Member must know that there are men who have been under restraint now for ten years and for eight years. No less than 800 of the prisoners in detention have had no charge brought against them and have been in detention for over four years. We ask in the Motion that something should be done about that state of affairs.

Mr. Braine: What the right hon. Gentleman has not told the House is that procedure exists, and has existed all through these years, for the review of each individual case.
What the hon. Lady the Member for Blackburn said did her great credit. She has campaigned to bring instances to the notice of the authorities but, in effect, what her arguments added up to was: "Here are the facts of the situation—look into them." They have been looked into. The machinery exists to examine these charges, and that facts have been established shows that effective machinery does exist. One would think from what she said that there was not any machinery and that, therefore, this House must promote a special inquiry.
That is not the case. First of all, there is the normal review and appeal procedure. I am told that the reviewing committee is at present looking into appeal cases that were previously dismissed. Secondly, as the right hon. Gentleman well knows, there is the advisory committee, presided over by a judge of the Supreme Court to hear appeals against detention. A great deal of what has been said casts the gravest reflection on the integrity and professional honesty of these men. Thirdly, since 1956, all camps have been inspected by Ministers, by heads of Departments and by district officers, and the Governor has set up an inspecting committee for each camp.
I do not say that the system is perfect, nor do I say that abuses have not occurred, but I do say that no single case can be quoted where the Kenya Govern-

ment or the Secretary of State has refused an inquiry into an allegation. The very allegations about which the hon. Lady talked at such great length are the subject at this very moment of an investigation. If this House does not trust the Kenya Government, it should remember that here at least the Secretary of State has to answer to the Parliament and the people of the United Kingdom for what is done in our name in Kenya. Therefore, these matters are under inquiry.
The noble Lord the Member for Hertford (Lord Balniel) referred to the Report of the International Red Cross Commission which went to Kenya and investigated 52 camps and prisons. The Commission's report, it is true, was confidential, but before leaving Kenya it issued a statement from which I should like to quote just two short passages. These are in a document dated 16th April, 1957, which reads:
We saw all conditions in camps and prisons and interviewed detainees freely and could measure the magnitude of the effort made to provide the necessities of life and adequate supervision for thousands of detainees and convicts of whom we still saw 35,000 in custody.… We think it our duty to say at this stage our considered opinion that all has been, and is being, done to respect the international principles accepted in the custody of detainees and convicts, within the rules embodied in the Emergency Regulations. Wherever and whenever we presented observations or remarks, these were always received with sympathetic consideration.
Is there any more impartial organisation than the International Red Cross? Apparently, it does not satisfy the hon. Lady—

Mrs. Castle: It not only does not satisfy me, but here is a prison officer of Kenya swearing an affidavit to the effect that when the Red Cross did visit particular camps in which he was, some of the cases of atrocity were quietly bundled out of the way so that the Commission did not see them.

Mr. Braine: The hon. Lady has not told the House that the ex-prison officer of Kenya whose allegations are now the subject of inquiry—[Interruption.] I copied down what the right hon. Gentleman said. He told us that he had evidence from a number of reputable persons, but in the very next breath he said that two or three of them—I am not sure whether


there were two or three—had served prison sentences. He was not able to tell us exactly what they were inside for but, apparently, these were "reputable persons," and theirs was evidence fit to lay before the Parliament of the United Kingdom—

Mr. Paget: Do not be so silly.

Mr. Braine: I am surprised that the hon. and learned Member for Northampton (Mr. Paget), who from his professional experience should be able to evaluate evidence and know just how much importance to attach to tainted evidence of that kind, should say that. This is the crux of the whole matter. In Reynolds News of 15th February, there was a headline
Africans coshed, beaten. More Kenya charges
and there was an account given there from a certain gallant major who alleged that he saw the beatings. There was a magnificent photograph of him and details of his allegations.
What I want to know, and what I think the House is entitled to know from my hon. Friend when he comes to reply, is the creditworthiness of this gentleman. I do not for a moment say that a man who has done "time", a man who is a proven liar in other respects, cannot speak the truth in a particular instance. I think it is right—I agree here entirely with the hon. Lady the Member for Blackburn—that any allegation of this kind should be investigated. But is it suggested that this House should thrust aside the Kenya Government and say, "We cannot trust you. We cannot rely upon you. We must set up an independent inquiry. The International Red Cross is not good enough for us"? Are we to say that on the strength of evidence of this kind? It would be an insult to the intelligence of the House and a base betrayal of our kinsmen overseas.

Mr. Creech Jones: I thought that, in fairness to the House, I should give some of the evidence from people whom the House might not regard as fully trustworthy. It does not follow that their evidence is false. I was merely trying to give the House some of the evidence which has come to hand. Moreover, some of the affidavits I did refer to are from people of high integrity, persons of strong

character, who have been in a position to know precisely what is happening in the prisons and detention centres.

Mr. Braine: What is so unfortunate about all this is that we have heard it before. There was Miss Fletcher, who took five months from the moment of resigning her job in Kenya as a rehabilitation officer before she burst into print with allegations which were subsequently shown to be unfounded. There was the letter from the Lokitaung convicts, published in a reputable Sunday newspaper, which not only was false in most of its particulars but grossly libelled a European officer. The Observer newspaper withdrew, apologised, and paid a substantial sum in damages. I would like some of the things said inside the House to be said outside against our fellow countrymen who have beeen facing in Kenya a situation of tremendous strain and difficulty for many years and who, in my humble opinion, deserve much better treatment at the hands of the Parliament of the United Kingdom.
Precisely because the Opposition cannot argue that the Kenya Government at any time have refused facilities for inquiries, precisely because there is no need for a new inquiry and adequate machinery exists, the Motion ought not to be pressed. It ought to be withdrawn. But there is another reason, in my submission, why the House should reject it. It is, in effect, a Motion of censure upon the Kenya Government, the Kenya Administration and our kinsfolk in that country.
I for one—though I speak here for myself alone, I suspect that I speak for a very large number of people in the country—deeply resent the inference behind all this that Britons, once they leave our shores, abandon their attachment to the principles of freeedom, decency and fair play. Everything which has happened in Kenya in the last few years proclaims the contrary. But some of the mud sticks. Remember what Bacon said:
It is not the lie that passeth through the mind, but the lie that sinketh in it …that doth the hurt.
A few of these lies do sink in, and the effect upon the morale of our people in Kenya, whether European, Asian, or African, of countenancing them is something which a good many Members of


the House of Commons, in their zeal and enthusiasm for the underdog, should sometimes take into account.
There is no case for the Motion. It would do the right hon. Gentleman credit if he were to withdraw it. If he does not, I hope that the House will reject it in the most decisive fashion.

9.0 p.m.

Mr. James Johnson: We have listened to the most amazing speech by the hon. Member for Essex, South-East (Mr. Braine), charged and supercharged with emotion, and, in fact, in parts contemptible. The hon. Member ranged from the Communists in the Malayan jungles to the lily-white heroes of Kenya. As so often in these debates, he went the whole gamut in party polemics
I have also been to Kenya and have seen bodies whose heads have been severed, so I hope hon. Members opposite will not think that we have not seen what is happening in Kenya and that they know all the answers. It would be a most unhappy situation in this House and dangerous for our interests overseas if it were believed that we on the Labour benches accepted everything that we were told by colonial peoples overseas without careful examination. That is not so. It would be equally dangerous—indeed more dangerous, I think, after listening to the speech of the hon. Gentleman—if the Conservative Members accepted without any question all the acts of white settlers and of colonial administrations in our territories overseas. There is a tendency for hon. Members opposite to stiffen whenever we make any comments about colonial government in our territories overseas.
I would say to hon. Members that loyalty to one's class and colour is not everything. There are times when all hon. Members should rise above party and even above so-called bipartisan policy and think of the dignity of this House and of the welfare of the people in Kenya. I beg of hon. Members opposite to dismiss this party bickering which they have been indulging in. We have just had a speech full of it. People outside this Chamber get tired of Parliamentary bickering on the lines of the speech which we have just heard.
I want to speak in terms not of my own party or of any other party, but in

terms of the people of Kenya and the people of this country outside this House who send us here to sit on these benches I have here not only letters, almost by the score, but a catalogue of all the Questions set down concerning these camps and prisons in Kenya over the last 12 months. Things have gone so far, both inside this House and outside it, that ordinary folk here and overseas are necessarily disturbed.
The Government of Kenya have made initial inquiries into camps and prisons We have had the Heaton and the International Red Cross inquiries, but there are widespread feelings, which I share fully, that further investigation is due by a person or persons outside the Colony, outside the Colonial Office and outside the Colonial Government in Kenya itself. We need an investigation by someone who is not less than a judge of the High Court of England. There is no other way, in my view, whereby these damaging facts cannot be conveniently hidden away. We have heard speeches both inside and outside the House of smear and counter smear, and now things are reaching the stage which existed in America in the days of McCarthy.
This is what is happening in Kenya There was a letter in the Observer regarding Lokitaung camp published with no confirmation, no footnote and no explanation. The inevitable happened and damages were paid to a Commissioner in Kenya. My hon. Friend the Member for Blackburn (Mrs. Castle) quoted earlier things said by myself about the prison camps in Kenya. May I say what we did. In our official report to Lord Chandos, as he now is, we said, united as an all-party delegation with the late Walter Elliot leading us, this about the police, and it still holds in some measure for these camps in Kenya. We found that—
… brutality and mal-practices by the police have occurred on a scale which constitutes a threat to public confidence in the forces of law and order.
We also stated Qn another page:
Increasing political pressure has been brought to bear on the Government with a view to securing the abandonment of at least some of the principles upon which British justice is founded
We said that in 1954, and those are the feelings today of many people on these benches and outside the House.
Earlier my right hon. Friend the Member for Wakefield (Mr. Creech Jones) made a damning and a well documented indictment, but I want to keep off any case of flogging, any cases of ill-treatment. I shall talk specifically of one camp, the Takwa Special Detention Camp, and of the men there who are not Mau Mau prisoners. This is the fallacy of hon. Gentlemen opposite. I am now pleading for political detainees, as my colleagues have done. The last words in our Motion speak of
… the prolonged detention of men against whom no charges have been made.
This is so. My hon. Friend the Member for Eton and Slough (Mr. Brockway) referred to one gentleman I know, Mr. Oneko. I have been in correspondence with these men over a period of some months, and I have many letters. I have one here which I have shown to colleagues on my side of the House. I have, as it were, tested them with it, and they have all said that such a letter rings sincere. And this is only one of many. This is what Mr. Oneko wrote to me on 3rd November from the Takwa Special Detention Camp:
Lately we have made further protests to the Secretary of State for the Colonies against molestation on detainees in rehabilitation camps in a cablegram and a letter giving the details of the incidents. Admittedly we are very much disturbed at the manner in which confession is sought by methods already denied by Mr. Lennox-Boyd publicly in the House of Commons, not once but severally. Here I am not talking against confession, neither am I trying to defend those candidates for rehabilitation. I mean those who had implicated themselves in Mau Mau evils, but who originally had, and still have, nothing to do with this beastly movement"—
He is talking of political detainees. The letter continues:
… and were simply arrested on purely political ground. Whatever the case may be, violence of any sort cannot be tolerated by both the Government and men of good will, and we in particular assert that though detained for all this time, we will not tolerate violence in any form. We denounce it as an utterly reverse method of either restoring peace or gaining claims or bringing about reforms.
This is the type of man with whom I am in correspondence and there are many more like him.
The funny thing is that Mr. Oneko has been acquitted with others, by the Kenya Supreme Court. This is the machine which we are told by hon. Gentlemen on

the benches opposite is doing a wonderful job. Very well, let us then accept its findings and let these men out of camp whom the Kenya legal machine, from the Chief Judge downwards, have acquitted. He is not alleged to have taken any unlawful oath. He is not alleged to be a terrorist. He is not accused of sedition. Details of his speeches are not given to him, to myself or to anyone else. All there has been is a vague accusation: "You made inflammatory speeches against the Government of Kenya and Europeans." Why are those men kept in these camps? They have been rotting away for two, four, six and even more years, and we talk about justice. There is no charge against them.
The Under-Secretary said on 31st January that there were 2,280 men and 91 women in 15 detention camps in Kenya. Of the 96 detainees on Manda Island, 50 had appeared before the Advisory Committee, which recommended that 22 should be passed through the pipeline camps for rehabilitation towards release. Mr. Oneko was told when he was interviewed and screened that he would be released. What was the condition? Like so many other cases, the condition was that he would not take part in any political activities outside the camp. What terms are those for men who, when they come out, hope, like Tom Mboya or Dr. Kiano, to play their part in building up the political society and leading their people to a fuller and better life?
What is the Government's policy? The Secretary of State gave us the figures on 31st January, and we know the sum total of the work to be done. What is the function of the Advisory Committee? Does it not advise that innocent men should be released from these camps? What advice does it give to Sir Evelyn Baring?
Regarding Kenya Government policy, let us pay regard to what Mr. Coutts, the Chief Secretary of Kenya, said in a speech in the Legislative Council a few weeks ago. He said that
there are more extreme detainees being put through the pipeline than ever, and that so long as that great experiment was going on it was impossible to lift the emergency.
Why is it impossible to lift the emergency? We lifted the emergency in Cyprus in a few hours, when we wished


to, given the conditions. What is it in Kenya which stops our lifting the emergency? There are a few hundred detainees waiting to be released. There is no reason why the emergency in Kenya should last a day longer. We have 13,000 policemen in Kenya, together with soldiers. They can keep order. I would not have thought that a few score of these political gentlemen being released would affect the body politic of Kenya.
I should like to ask one or two more questions. What access is there to these camps? Question after question has been asked on this matter, and we have been told that the Secretary of State is satisfied. In answer to my hon. Friend the Member for Flint, East (Mrs. White), who asked a Question about Lokitaung Prison on 22nd July, the Secretary of State said that he would do
everything possible to strengthen the system of visiting justices … to this prison."— [OFFICIAL REPORT, 22nd July, 1958; Vol. 592, c. 220.]
The Secretary of State did not think it necessary to appoint visiting justices other than provincial and district officials.
I should also like to ask what is happening to letters which are being sent out of the camps by detainees, censored or otherwise, and letters sent into the camps by Members of Parliament, people like myself and my hon. Friends.
In answer to my hon. Friend the Member for Wednesbury (Mr. Stone-house), the Secretary of State said on 29th July that no measures would be taken against prisoners who wrote to newspapers complaining of conditions, but they would be warned that any further communications constituted a breach of the prison regulations. My last letter to Mr. Oneko was as far back as December. I have not had a reply to it. I would like the Minister to find out what is happening to letters which are sent to camps like Takwa. If they are being censored, we do not mind. If they are being stopped on the way, that is a quite different kettle of fish.
If I go to Kenya, as I hope to this Easter, will I see any of the camps which I wish to visit? I hope that I will. I should like to know who will make an effort to stop me. If a Member of Parliament can go to these camps, why cannot African Members of the Legislative Council in Nairobi also visit them? What is the objection to that? Why

cannot men who are elected by their fellow Africans see what is happening in these camps?

Mr. Patrick Wall: The hon. Gentleman will recall that two of the African elected Members have said in public that they look to Jomo Kenyatta, the founder of the Mau Mau, still as their political and spiritual leader.

Mr. Johnson: I dismiss that, as I dismiss some of the earlier contemptible emotional stuff that we have heard. [HON. MEMBERS: "Answer."] I can see no objection whatever to African Members of the Legislative Council going to these camps. I also want European Members of the Council to go into them. Why should a man like Mr. Shirley Cooke, for example, not visit the camps? Any Government that fears ventilation of the conditions of camps within their Colony cannot fail but give the impression that there is something to hide. It would be a good thing for the Government of Kenya themselves if they were to favour or support a visiting commission of inquiry. They owe it to themselves to do it.
When he replies to the debate, the Under-Secretary of State for the Colonies should grasp this nettle, and he should not be afraid of being unpopular with European settlers in Kenya. I would commend to him the words which are sworn by all Governors when they take the oath of office. They swear
to do right by all manner of men, without fear or favour, affection or ill-will.

9.17 p.m.

Mr. Patrick Wall: At the beginning of his speech the hon. Member for Rugby (Mr. J. Johnson) said that we on this side of the House tended to stiffen when we heard the Kenya Administration or the white settlers criticised. The reason why we stiffen is the lack of impartiality on the part of hon. and right hon. Members opposite. The right hon. Member for Wakefield (Mr. Creech Jones) and other hon. Members opposite, after saying that there is no reflection on the Government of Kenya, have proceeded during the rest of their speeches to paint a picture showing that warders maltreated prisoners and that this was known to the Administration and that nothing was done about it. That is a travesty of the facts. All these cases


have been investigated and many are under investigation today.

Mr. J. Johnson: Perhaps the hon. Member would like to answer the point which was the burden of my speech about political detainees in the detention camps. Why cannot they be set free?

Mr. Wall: The smear campaign which is being carried on from some of the benches opposite—not by the hon. Member for Rugby—has a political motive, which is to upset the Government of Kenya and to do everything to undermine European administration.
No hon. Member would allow prisoners to be maltreated or wish to see people imprisoned without fair trial. On the other hand, we must remember the background. My hon. Friend the Member for Essex, South-East (Mr. Braine) described the bestiality of Mau Mau. We all know what a terrible thing it was and how the oath taken by the hard core of Mau Mau virtually turned a man into a beast. We owe it to the loyal Kikuyu and the other tribes to see to it that these men are not allowed to associate with their tribes in Kenya again.
The hon. Member for Rugby asked why the emergency regulations cannot be lifted. He knows that the situation in Kenya is still tense and that two African Members have said that Kenyatta is still their leader. He knows that K.K.M., the aftermath of Mau Mau, is still in existence and has dangerous potentialities. He knows that Lairi villagers who were given badges to show that they were loyal Kikuyu are now frightened to wear them because of the fear of intimidation directed for political motives and exercised by certain African elected Members in Kenya. It has been put to the House already that large numbers of prisoners have not only been liberated but rehabilitated so that they are now useful members of society and are doing fine work, as I saw for myself, when I visited Kenya last month. The Kikuyu tribe is now becoming a prosperous settled community, and I believe that that is due to the rehabilitation programme which must not be upset.
As an aside, I want to add that I hope that the Government will continue with the financial help given to the Kenya Government, particularly for the purpose of continuing social services whose con-

tinuance is badly needed even though we have got down to the hard core of the terrorists. We must not forget that we still need to spend money on social services in Kenya.
Nearly all of the complaints advanced this evening—I would prefer to say all of them, but I will be strictly fair and say nearly all—have come from persons with chips on their shoulders, people with resentment against the Administration in Kenya, people who have been dismissed from the service for one reason or another, people who have made a failure of their own lives and who are now getting back at the Kenya Government. They are not those with legitimate complaints.
Of all the criticisms which have been advanced, almost all have been shown on investigation to be unjustified and those which have proved to be justified, as the hon. Member for Blackburn (Mrs. Castle) said, have resulted in action being taken and people being punished by imprisonment or dismissal, as they should be and as the House would wish. We have had the case of the famous Lokitaung letter about which the Observer had to apologise and over which it had to pay damages. On the other side, we have had examinations by the International Red Cross, Parliamentary delegations, the C.P.A., the Kenya Government and other impartial witnesses.
Hon. Members opposite are asking that every time a tainted criticism is made there should be a judicial investigation by the House of Commons. They are asking us to put on a pedestal people who have chips on their shoulders, people who have grudges against the Kenya Government and to disregard the International Red Cross. This smear campaign stems from political motives. No hon. Member wants to see any prisoner maltreated or kept in prison without trial, but a smear campaign is extremely difficult to track down.
All that can be done is to have each case investigated as it arises. My right hon. Friend the Colonial Secretary has done that and in some cases the complaint has proved justified, but in many others the allegations have been proved unjustified. Nevertheless, the campaign continues and I repeat that it is political and designed to undermine the authority of the Government of Kenya and belief


in European tradition of liberty and justice in that Colony. That is the political objective and the Motion should therefore be decisively rejected to show that we have faith in our own people in Kenya who believe in justice as much as we do.

9.23 p.m.

The Under-Secretary of State for the Colonies (Mr. Julian Amery): I hope that hon. Members will forgive me if I intervene at this stage, but the debate is extremely important and the Motion, for all the mild tones in which the right hon. Member for Wakefield (Mr. Creech Jones) moved it, is a Motion of censure on the policy of the Kenya Government—and therefore my right hon. Friend—towards detention and the prison services in Kenya.
Naturally, the House always feels very sensitive when there are allegations that British subjects may be guilty of brutality. The House feels that way, as do the Government. I am sure that hon. Members will understand if I take a little more time than the normal half-hour to try to deal as best I can with the matters which have been raised.
The Motion falls into two halves. There is a demand for an independent inquiry into the prison camps and detention camps, and there is a demand for a review of the whole detention system. I will deal first with the problem of detention. To understand it, I must ask right hon. and hon. Members to cast their minds back a little. It was not only very difficult for us to understand at the time the situation created by the Mau Mau emergency; it is very difficult for us to remember it today. This was a situation in which murders were being committed in the presence of hundreds of people, and yet no witnesses would come forward and the weapons could not be found. Unless we were to relinquish all ideas of law and order, we had to detain persons about whom we had legitimate suspicion, though these could not be proved in the courts.
Some of these people are in detention still, and hon. Members will appreciate that it is no good saying at this stage "If you think them guilty of these actions, why do you not bring them to trial?" because the circumstances in which they were detained were circumstances in which no witnesses would come forward.
Detention was necessary for the security of Kenya at the time, and I think that this was accepted at the time on all sides. Detention was also necessary for the sake of the detainees themselves. There could have been no rehabilitation and no washing away of the Mau Mau taint had there not been detention, and it was indeed, as my hon. Friend the Member for Essex, South-East (Mr. Braine) emphasised, precisely because the detention camps were also the rehabilitation camps that the great majority of the Mau Mau convicts were taken out of their prisons and put into the detention camps, so that they could go through the process of rehabilitation.
What happened in these camps is, I think, an amazing story of social engineering, hard for those of us who do not know the African background well to understand, and yet one the success of which has been acclaimed by Members of Parliament of all parties who have seen it at work. The results speak for themselves. Of more than 80,000 detainees, a little over 2,000 now remain in detention. Who would have thought this possible two or three years ago?
Two problems still remain in connection with detention. There is, first of all, the problem of the hard core of detainees, and then there is the problem of whether it is necessary to keep detention longer, so far as the rest of the community is concerned. Let me deal first with the problem of the hard core. In the view of the Government of Kenya and of Her Majesty's Government here, no one can be judged permanently irreconcilable, but equally, so long as a detainee shows himself to be irreconcilable, it would be very dangerous in many cases, perhaps in all cases, to release him.
The Commonwealth Party delegation, which included the hon. Member for St. Pancras, North (Mr. K. Robinson), the hon. Lady the Member for Flint, East (Mrs. White) and the hon. Member for the Park Division of Sheffield (Mr. Mulley) called for the utmost speed in ending detention, but agreed that there were certain hard core detainees. The delegation described them as self-confessed criminals under the former amnesty, men convicted of serious crimes or men who for other reasons would be regarded as inimical to the security of the State and of law and order for a long time


ahead. They said that provision would have to be made to ensure that such persons—whose numbers would probably be relatively small—would not endanger public security or resume full liberty of action until they had renounced Mau Mau.

Mr. Brockway: The hon. Gentleman has referred to the "hard core." What about the men who are still in detention and have been for 4, 6 and 8 years, men who have been tried and acquitted of any crime, yet are still kept in detention?

Mr. Amery: Will the hon. Member allow me to develop my argument a little? I am coming to that.
The hon. Member for Rugby (Mr. J. Johnson) said that we ought to lift the State of Emergency at once. I understood him to mean that we should release the detainees, this hard core—

Mr. J. Johnson: Mr. J. Johnson indicated dissent.

Mr. Amery: If I misunderstood the hon. Gentleman, I shall be happy to give way to allow him to explain.

Mr. J. Johnson: I believe that there is a hard core of Mau Mau thugs who were psychologically and physically brutalised. There is a hard core; let there be no mistake about that. But I was talking about the political detainees —Mr. Oneko and others.

Mr. Amery: I am glad that the hon. Member has made his position clear. It helps us to this extent, that at any rate part—I cannot give the figure—of the 2,000 still under detention will in our view—and in the view of the hon. Member—have to remain under detention. Some special provision will have to be made for them even though the State of Emergency were lifted for the rest of the country.

Mr. Foot: Presumably the hon. Member is referring to the decision announced by the Governor of Kenya on 4th November. Are we to understand that those persons are to be kept in prison for the rest of their lives without trial?

Mr. Amery: If the hon. and learned Gentleman had listened, he would have heard me say that in the view of the Kenya Government, and of Her Majesty's Government, nobody can be regarded as permanently irreconcilable.

Mr. Foot: Then for how long?

Mr. Amery: It is a question of whether they become reconcilable or not.
The hon. Member for Rugby was expressing agreement with the view that there were certain hard core elements who, unless they became rehabilitated, could not safely be released.

Mr. H. Hynd: That is what Hitler said.

Mr. Amery: This is one problem, the problem of the hard core of unrehabilitated Mau Mau. That is one side of the argument. There is a second problem concerning the application of detention powers to the rest of the community. The House must recognise that one of the reasons we have been able to release as many detainees as fast as we have done is that the detention powers still exist. We have been able to take risks by releasing some people about whose rehabilitation we have not been absolutely sure, because, were we proved wrong, we still had power to take them in again.
Kenya, as a country is normal, but there is still a pretty serious tension under the surface. Last year 1,700 K.K.M. elements had to be arrested and the great majority of them were convicted in the courts. About 350 were detained. These were the leaders of the organisation against whom it would not, I think, have been possible to produce a criminal charge. Without the emergency regulations we should not have been able to detain them. Had we not been able to do so—I do not want to exaggerate— I think it quite possible that there might have been serious trouble and bloodshed, and a halt called to much of the constructive work which has been going on.
The right hon. Member for Wakefield said that the 800 detainees who had never been tried should be released.

Mr. Creech Jones: Mr. Creech Jones indicated dissent.

Mr. Amery: I understood the right hon. Gentleman to say that. Does he wish to withdraw that statement?

Mr. Creech Jones: I said their cases should be reviewed.

Mr. Amery: The Motion calls for a review, but I understood the right hon. Gentleman to say clearly that the 800 who had not been tried should be released. I


am glad to understand now that that is not his view. In an intervention during a speech by one of my hon. Friends the right hon. Gentleman said that people had been detained for ten years. The right hon. Gentleman spoke mildly, but that is an exaggeration. No one has been detained for more than six-and-a-half years.

Mr. Creech Jones: I said restrained.

Mr. Amery: The emergency only began in 1952.
The hon. Member for Eton and Slough (Mr. Brockway) described some of the hard core who were detained as among the noblest of characters. I do not know individually those of whom the hon. Gentleman spoke, but it should be remembered that some were the hard core thugs to whom the hon. Member for Rugby referred. Some are more political in character and perhaps carry the greatest responsibility for the bloodshed—above all among their own people—which ensued from the Mau Mau outbreak.

Mr. Brockway: Not those whom I have in mind.

Mr. Amery: I do not know whom the hon. Gentleman has in mind, but I am coming to one of them in a moment. I refer to the case of Mr. Oneko, to whom the hon. Member for Rugby referred. I will deal with the case right away because that may be convenient in this context.
Mr. Oneko was secretary of the organisation from which, in a sense, the Mau Mau movement sprang. He has been in detention since the early days of the emergency. His position has been twice reviewed, once in 1954 and again last year, but it has not been possible to recommend release. The Governor has been considering what could be done 'to ease Mr. Oneko's situation and have recently decided that he should be moved as a detainee to Marsabit. We hope that his detainee status may be changed to one of enforced residence so that his wife may join him there. The hon. Member for Rugby asked what had happened to letters he had addressed to Mr. Oneko. If our hopes materialise as to the way in which Mr. Oneko's status can be changed, it should be possible for the hon. Member to see him when the hon. Member goes to Kenya.

Mr. J. Johnson: I would sooner have Mr. Oneko out of the camp. That would be much better.

Mr. Amery: The last thing that the Government want to do is to detain anybody for a day longer than is necessary. The speed with which the camps have emptied speaks for itself. We shall get rid of all the detainees, release them all, as soon as possible, but responsibly. That time has not yet come. To turn back into the Kenya community 2,000 cases, be they of hard core thugs or unrepentant political adherents or sympathisers of the Mau Mau movement, could at this stage interfere with the constructive attempt being made to rehabilitate Kenya.
It is essential, however, that there should be checks to ensure that the power of detention is not being abused. What are the checks which we have? First of all, there is the ordinary administrative review. There is, I know, a tendency to believe that administrative reviews may be biassed, but the fact remains that it is by administrative review that well over 90 per cent. of the releases have already been secured. The next check is the Advisory Committee, headed by a judge of the Supreme Court. About 2,500 appeals have been heard by this Committee, and more than 1,000 individuals have been released. The Committee is now hearing again a number of cases.
We can claim, I think, that the power of detention is still necessary to hold the unrehabilitated Mau Mau elements until they are rehabilitated. It is necessary, too, to enable releases to take place as soon as possible, occasionally running a risk, and to enable us, in case there should be a more eruptive development of the K.K.M., to safeguard the security of the community.
We do not regard this detention as a normal or permanent feature of Kenya life. I assure my hon. Friend the Member for Essex, South-East, who raised the question, that as soon as we possibly can we shall end the Emergency and give up the detention powers, but the time has not yet come for that. Meanwhile, I suggest that there is an adequate check against abuse and that no special review such as the Motion calls for is required.
I come now to the second part of the Motion which calls for


an independent inquiry into the conditions and administration of prisons and detention camps in Kenya.
The hon. and right hon. Gentlemen who put their names to this Motion will realise that this is a pretty grave censure on the Kenya prison service.
Before the House makes up its mind on this proposal there are two points which, in fairness to the Kenya Prison Service, it has to consider. First, it has to consider whether the system under which the Kenya prisons and camps operate is properly designed and has proper machinery for ensuring that abuses are checked. Secondly, it has to consider whether in practice that machine is working effectively.
Every prison system under British control provides machinery for investigating complaints and checking abuse. Have we the right machinery in Kenya? The administration of the prisons operates under ordinances and Rules which were made in 1948 and 1949 by the Government of the day. The system is broadly similar to ours in this country. Instead of a visiting committee or board of visitors which we have in the United Kingdom, Kenya has visiting justices and official visitors to prisons. They have wide powers to see for themselves what is going on in the prisons they visit and to call for papers. Visiting justices are judges, magistrates and Ministers. Official visitors are mostly "unofficials". Detention camps have a similar system of committees of inspection. Official visitors and committees of inspection include Asians and Africans. In addition, ministers of religion are allowed in, as are senior prison officers on routine tours of inspection.
A question has been raised by the hon. Member for Rugby about permission for members of the Legislative Council to go to the prisons and camps. There have been a number of visits by members of the Legislative Council—members of all races—to the prisons in the last year. They have not been allowed to go to the detention camps. I should like to explain why that is. The essential purpose of the camps is to rehabilitate the Mau Mau detained there and to persuade them to give up the doctrine of Mau Mau. Some of the members of the Legislative Council have been making what I can only call pro-Mau Mau speeches. Some re-

ferred at Accra to Mau Mau as freedom fighters. If they were to go to the camps and were to say these things in conversation with detainees or to a larger audience, that could have a disturbing effect on the whole process of rehabilitation. That is why members of the Legislative Council have not been allowed in the camps whose chief duty is rehabilitation. They have been allowed to go to the prisons and to make suggestions, which in many cases have been adopted.

Mr. J. Johnson: What about political camps like Takwa and the Manda Island?

Mr. Amery: I should have thought that to go to political camps and refer to Mau Mau as freedom fighters would not help the rehabilitation or the orderly release of the Africans whose welfare the hon. Member has so much at heart.
All prisoners and those detained in detention camps have the right to petition the Governor of Kenya, just as prisoners here have the right to petition the Home Secretary, and they have also the right to petition the Secretary of State for the Colonies. In one respect, the practice is more liberal than it is here. Some years ago the Home Secretary of the day laid it down:
that a prisoner shall not be allowed to make complaints about his prison treatment in a letter to an M.P. unless he has already exhausted his right of making the complaint through the proper channels".
The reason, I think, is worth quoting in the context of this debate. It was:
if a prisoner is to be allowed to use a letter to an M.P. for the purpose of making complaints about his treatment which he would not be allowed to make in an ordinary letter and which he has never made to the prison authorities, the result would be that a prisoner could by-pass the appointed channels for the investigation of such complaints and could make with impunity the most malicious and unfounded allegations against particular officers. This seems … likely eventually to undermine the authority of the Visiting Committee and Board of Visitors who are the independent check on prison administration for which Parliament has made provision.
This is the rule and practice in the United Kingdom. We have always been ready, in Kenya, to investigate even anonymous allegations, but the process has encouraged more unfounded allegations.

Mr. Creech Jones: I understand that in the case of a number of prisons and


prison camps the visiting magistrates consist of the provincial commissioner and the district commissioner. I believe that no provision is made for independent non-official visitors to perform the function of visiting and inspecting. That provision is made by the visiting magistrate in this country, but it is not made in the case of Kenya.

Mr. Amery: The right hon. Gentleman has not heard what I said. I said that there were several categories—the visiting magistrate; official visitors, who, curiously enough are in most cases "unofficial"; ministers of religion; and senior prison officers on routine tours of inspection. Further, members of the Legislative Council visit prisons. That is a quite wide range of visitors.
In all this procedure we are advised by an advisory committee on the treatment of offenders, and that committee includes the legal adviser of my right hon. Friend; the adviser on social welfare; Colonel Heaton, who spent a life-time studying and working in the prisons of East Africa; Sir Lionel Fox, Chairman of the Prison Commission; the wife of the right hon. Member for Wakefield; the President of the Bar Council, Mr. Gardiner, and a principal probation officer from this country, Mr. MacRae. Three of them have been to Kenya to see things for themselves, and Colonel Heaton's report is in the Library.
The answer to the question whether, theoretically, the organisation of prisons and camps is adequate is therefore undoubtedly "Yes".
How has this worked out in practice? In 1952 there were 43 European officers, 1,100 Africans working with them, and 9,000 prisoners. Then came the Mau Mau emergency. I will not recall at this hour all that that meant, but in terms of the prison problem it meant that by 1954, the number of European officers had risen from 43 to 457; the number of Africans from just over 1,000 to 14,000, including officers and warders, and the number of prisoners from 9,000 to 87,000. This expansion was met by local recruiting; secondment from the police reserve, and the Kenya Regiment, and contract recruiting in the United Kingdom. Most of those recruited had no previous experience of prison work. There was little or no time to train them.
The House can imagine the implications of this for the African prison staff, who required longer training in pre-emergency times than did the European staff. Camps had to be improvised, and one camp received about 5,000 prisoners in five days. There were attacks on prisons by Mau Mau from outside, and mutinies inside. Hon. Member know the sort of character that some of the prisoners had.
Inevitably, as Colonel Heaton's report makes clear, in these circumstances there undoubtedly was some malpractice, which was not brought to light. It is not surprising that this should have been so. Like Colonel Heaton, I am much more surprised at how little there was. But in remembering that there was malpractice which was not brought to light we should salute the 99 per cent. of the prison service which did an extremely difficult job in an exemplary manner.
In his report Colonel Heaton admitted that mistakes were made at the height of the emergency, but since then matters have been taken in hand. The load on the prisons and camps has been greatly reduced. Only 2,000 are left in detention, as well as an ordinary prison population of criminals which is slightly higher than it was before the emergency. Standards have been raised and indiscipline has been punished by prosecution or dismissal. The right hon. Gentleman said that the Kenya Report said that there had been dismissals from the prison service and that there had been convictions. In 1956 there were fifty-six convictions in the courts against prison staff. In 1957 there were seventy-three convictions. I pass over dismissals or ordinary reprimands. Not all of these, not even most of them, sprang from ill treatment of prisoners. They were the result of acts of indiscipline of various kinds. Several cases were brought before the House.
The right hon. Gentleman suggested that this was a sign of the need for an inquiry. I submit to him and to the House that the fact that there have been these prosecutions and dismissals shows that the Government of Kenya and the prison service in Kenya is perfectly capable of keeping its own house in order and is doing so. Our contention is that the organisation of the prison service is right and is what it should be and that the safeguards against abuse are effective.


The expansion under the Emergency caused very great difficulties, but these have been and are being overcome and the Kenya Government have shown themselves ready, not only to set high standards, but to maintain them.
This is not only the opinion on this side of the House and in the Colonial Office. It is an opinion that has been confirmed by three members of our Advisory Committee—Sir Lionel Fox, Colonel Heaton and Mr. Chin—who have been out. As my noble Friend the Member for Hertford (Lord Balniel) explained, quoting the Report of the Commonwealth Parliamentary Delegation, of which he was a Member, it was confirmed by that Delegation. It was also confirmed by the two delegates from the International Red Cross.
The hon. Member for Blackburn (Mrs. Castle) rather tended in one of her interventions to brush aside the value of the Report of the International Red Cross by quoting an allegation in an affidavit which she had that in that particular camp the worst cases were kept out of their way. That may or may not be true. That point has not yet been fully investigated. If the hon. Lady believes that of the International Red Cross, does she think that another impartial inquiry cannot be fooled in the same way? One has to have faith somewhere in this if one is to arrive at an answer and at a judgment.

Mrs. Castle: That statement was not made in just one of the affidavits. It was in the affidavit of a prison officer of Kenya, against whom no criminal charge has been brought and whose name therefore cannot be smeared in the way in which some hon. Gentlemen tried to smear the makers of some of the other affidavits. Surely the question is what power the visiting committee has and whether all our attempts at supervision have foundered on the fact that the Committee has not had wide enough powers?

Mr. Amery: The two delegates from the International Red Cross were there for three months, and I should have thought that they knew their job well enough.
In spite of these views expressed by the Commonwealth Parliamentary Delegation and by the International Red Cross, the Opposition now calls for an independent inquiry. It bases its demand upon two

sets of reasons; first on allegations which come in the form of letters to Members of Parliament; and, secondly, upon statements by certain individuals with experience of Kenya prisons. The right hon. Gentleman said that he had no wish to denigrate the Kenya prison service. He succeeded at one moment in denigration by innuendo. I was a little surprised at his readiness to believe information which came from what he said were tainted sources. He told us that he also had affidavits from men of strong character and trustworthiness. I am surprised that he did not do the House the honour of quoting from those.
I should like now to deal with examples of the two sets of allegations on which the Opposition base their case. First of all, there is the case that the hon. Lady developed at some length. The detainees who wrote to her also wrote, a little earlier, to my right hon. Friend. As soon as he got their letters—one on 15th September and another on 20th October—my right hon. Friend referred them to Kenya. The hon. Lady also sent him a letter which we in the Colonial Office received on 22nd October. The hon. Lady has explained how in the first reply from Kenya it was stated that death had been due to pulmonary infection. We informed the hon. Lady of this on 31st October. On 5th November, we heard from Kenya that death had been due, not to infection but to infarction. The hon. Lady was informed on 12th November. We asked the Kenya Government to carry out a further inquiry, and, on 14th January, Kenya reported the results, and the news that they were to prosecute Mr. Githu, one of those concerned in the case and the hon. Lady was again informed.
I want to make it quite clear to the House that I am not giving this information in any spirit of trying to score off the hon. Lady, but the right hon. Gentleman has said that but for her intervention these facts would never have come to light. On the contrary, we were already acting in this matter, and I can assure the hon. Lady and the House that the result would have been the same even without Parliamentary intervention; that the normal process of checking on reports of malpractice was going on, and that the Kenya Government were taking action in the ordinary course.
The hon. and learned Member for Northampton (Mr. Paget) expressed surprise that no murder charge had been brought. He said that, as far as he could remember, on six occasions a murder charge had not been brought for deaths in prison—

Mr. Paget: No, not all in prison.

Mr. Amery: There have been only two deaths in prison, apart from the one that we are investigating now. In each case a murder charge was brought, although, in the event, it was rejected by the jury. What I want to emphasise in this case is that a full report was sought by my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State before the case was originally taken up, further investigation was ordered by the Kenya Government, and the new and regrettable facts that came to light as a result of that inquiry were promptly made known to the hon. Lady.
Before 10 o'clock, I should like to answer a question asked by my hon. Friend the Member for Essex, South-East about the reliability of the gentlemen whose names have been put to the affidavits. Mr. Bird, who had been a former Kenya Labour Officer—and who, if I remember aright, the right hon. Gentleman said had been guilty of a small theft—was found guilty of converting to his own use £400 deposited on behalf of a Kikuyu detainee. Incidentally, this shows that we do fall

down pretty hard on those who do that sort of thing.

I should like to go on with the others, though time presses. The allegations made by Mr. Shuter are being most carefully examined now, and it would be quite wrong to think that we are not treating them with due seriousness. In Kenya and Uganda, 83 statements have already been taken, and another 12 have been taken here.

In conclusion, I submit that our system is sound, and practice is proving that it is reliable. In those circumstances, an inquiry could only shake public confidence in the Government of Kenya, and weaken the morale of the prison service. We cannot advise the House to accept the Motion.

Mr. Bowden: rose in his place, and claimed to move. That the Question be now put.

Question, That the Question be now put, put and agreed to.

Question put accordingly,
That this House urges Her Majesty's Government, with a view to allaying public anxiety, to institute an independent inquiry into the conditions and administration of prisons and detention camps in Kenya; and also to review the prolonged detention of men against whom no charges have been made.

The House divided: Ayes 232, Noes 288.

Division No. 51.]
AYES
[9.59 p.m.


Abse, Leo
Butler, Mrs. Joyce (Wood Green)
Finch, H. J. (Bedwellty)


Ainsley, J. W.
Callaghan, L. J.
Fitch, A. E. (Wigan)


Albu, A. H.
Castle, Mrs. B. A.
Fletcher, Eric


Allen, Arthur (Bosworth)
Champion, A. J.
Foot, D. M.


Awbery, S. S.
Chapman, W. D.
Fraser, Thomas (Hamilton)


Bacon, Miss Alice
Chetwynd, G. R.
Gaitskell, Rt. Hon. H. T. N.


Balfour, A.
Cliffe, Michael
George, Lady Megan Lloyd (Car'then)


Bellenger, Rt. Hon. F. J.
Coldrick, W.
Gooch, E. G.


Bence, C. R. (Dunbartonshire, E.)
Collick, P. H. (Birkenhead)
Gordon Walker, Rt. Hon. P. C.


Benn, Hn. Wedgwood (Bristol, S.E.)
Corbet, Mrs. Freda
Greenwood, Anthony


Benson, Sir George
Craddock, George (Bradford, S.)
Grenfell, Rt. Hon. D. R.


Beswick, Frank
Crossman, R. H. S.
Grey, C. F.


Blackburn, F.
Cullen, Mrs. A.
Griffiths, Rt. Hon. James (Llanelly)


Blenkinsop, A.
Dalton, Rt. Hon. H.
Griffiths, William (Exchange)


Blyton, W. R.
Darling, George (Hillsborough)
Hale, Leslie


Boardman, H.
Deer, G.
Hall, Rt. Hn. Glenvil (Colne Valley)


Bonham Carter, Mark
de Freitas, Geoffrey
Hamilton, W. W.


Bowden, H. W. (Loicester, S.W.)
Delargy, H. J.
Hannan, W.


Bowen, E. R (Cardigan)
Diamond, John
Harrison, J. (Nottingham, N.)


Bowles, F. G.
Dodds, N. N.
Hastings, S.


Boyd, T. C.
Donnelly, D. L.
Hayman, F. H.


Braddock, Mrs. Elizabeth
Ede, Rt. Hon. J. C.
Healey, Denis


Brockway, A. F.
Edelman, M.
Henderson, Rt. Hn. A. (Rwly Regls)


Broughton, Dr. A. D. D.
Edwards, Rt. Hon. Ness (Caerphilly)
Herbison, Miss M.


Brown, Rt. Hon. George (Belper)
Edwards, Robert (Bilston)
Hewitson, Capt. M.


Brown, Thomas (Ince)
Edwards, W. J. (Stepney)
Hobson, C. R. (Keighlev)


Burke, W. A.
Evans, Albert (Islington, S.W.)
Holmes, Horace


Burton, Miss F. E.
Evans, Edward (Lowestoft)
Holt, A. F.


Butler, Herbert (Hackney, C.)
Fernyhough, E.
Houghton, Douglas




Howell, Charles (Perry Barr)
Messer, Sir F.
Silverman, Julius (Aston)


Howell, Denis (All Saints)
Mikardo, Ian
Silverman, Sydney (Nelson)


Hoy, J. H.
Mitchison, G. R.
Skeffington, A. M.


Hughes, Cledwyn (Anglesey)
Monslow, W.
Slater, Mrs. H. (Stoke, N.)


Hughes, Hector (Aberdeen, N.)
Moody, A. S.
Slater, J. (Sedgefield)


Hunter, A. E.
Morris, Percy (Swansea, W.)
Smith, Ellis (Stoke, S.)


Hynd, H. (Accrington)
Morrison, Rt. Hn. Herbert (Lewis'm, S.)
Snow, J. W.


Hynd, J. B. (Attercliffe)
Mort, D. L.
Sorensen, R. W.


Irvine, A. J. (Edge Hill)
Moss, R.
Soskice, Rt. Hon. Sir Frank


Irving, Sydney (Dartford)
Moyle, A.
Sparks, J. A.


Isaacs, Rt. Hon. G. A.
Mulley, F. W.
Spriggs, Leslie


Janner, B.
Neal, Harold (Bolsover)
Steele, T.


Jay, Rt. Hon. D. P. T.
Noel-Baker, Francis (Swindon)
Stewart, Michael (Fulham)


Jeger, George (Goole)
Noel-Baker, Rt. Hon. P. (Derby, S.)
Strachey, Rt. Hon. J.


Jeger, Mrs. Lena (Holbn &amp; St. Pncs, S.)
O'Brien, Sir Thomas
Strauss, Rt. Hon. George (Vauxhall)


Johnson, James (Rugby)
Oliver, G. H.
Stross, Dr. Barnett (Stoke-on-Trent, C.)


Johnston, Douglas (Paisley)
Oram, A. E.
Summerskill, Rt. Hon. E.


Jones, Rt. Hon. A. Creech (Wakefield)
Oswald, T.
Swingler, S. T.


Jones, David (The Hartlepools)
Owen, W. J.
Sylvester, G. O.


Jones, Jack (Rotherham)
Paget, R. T.
Taylor, Bernard (Mansfield)


Jones, J. Idwal (Wrexham)
Paling, Rt. Hon. W. (Dearne Valley)
Taylor, John (West Lothian)


Jones, T. W. (Merioneth)
Palmer, A. M. F.
Thomas, Iorwerth (Rhondda, W.)


Kenyon, C.
Pannell, Charles (Leeds, W.)
Thompson, George (Dundee, E.)


Key, Rt. Hon. C. W.
Pargiter, G. A.
Thornton, E.


King, Dr. H. M.
Parkin, B. T.
Timmons, J.


Lawson, G. M.
Paton, John
Tomney, F.


Ledger, R. J.
Peart, T. F.
Usborne, H. C.


Lee, Frederick (Newton)
Pentland, N.
Viant, S. P.


Lee, Miss Jennie (Cannock)
Plummer, Sir Leslie
Warbey, W. N.


Lever, Harold (Cheetham)
Popplewell, E.
Weitzman, D.


Lever, Leslie (Ardwick)
Prentice, R. E.
Wells, Percy (Faversham)


Lindgren, G. S.
Price, Philips (Gloucestershire, W.)
Wells, William (Walsall, N.)


Logan, D. G.
Probert, A. R.
White, Mrs. Eirene (E. Flint)


Mabon, Dr. J. Dickson
Proctor, W. T.
White, Henry (Derbyshire, N.E.)


McAlister, Mrs. Mary
Pursey, Cmdr. H.
Wilcock, Group Capt. C. A. B.


MacColl, J. E.
Rankin, John
Wilkins, W. A.


McInnes, J.
Redhead, E. C.
Willey, Frederick


McKay, John (Wallsend)
Reeves. J.
Williams, David (Neath)


McLeavy, Frank
Reynolds, G. W.
Williams, W. R. (Openshaw)


MacMillan, M. K. (Western Isles)
Rhodes, H.
Willis, Eustace (Edinburgh, E.)


MacPherson, Malcolm (Stirling)
Robens, Rt. Hon. A.
Wilson, Rt. Hon. Harold (Huyton)


Mahon, Simon
Roberts, Albert (Normanton)
Winterbottom, Richard


Mallalieu, E. L. (Brigg)
Roberts, Goronwy (Caernarvon)
Woodburn, Rt. Hon. A.


Mallalieu, J. P. W. (Huddersfd, E.)
Robinson, Kenneth (St. Pancras, N.)
Woof, R. E.


Mann, Mrs. Jean
Rogers, George (Kensington, N.)
Yates, V. (Ladywood)


Marquand, Rt. Hon. H. A.
Ross, William
Younger, Rt. Hon. K.


Mason, Roy
Royle, C.
Zilllacus, K.


Mayhew, C. P.
Shinwell, Rt. Hon. E.



Mellish, R. J.
Shurmer, P. L. E.
TELLERS FOR THE AYES:




Mr. Pearson and Mr. Simmons.




NOES


Agnew, Sir Peter
Brooman-White, R. C.
Dugdale, Rt. Hn. Sir T. (Richmond)


Aitken, W. T.
Browne, J. Nixon (Craigton)
Duncan, Sir James


Allan, R. A. (Paddington, S.)
Bryan, P.
Duthie, W. S.


Alport, C. J. M.
Bullus, Wing Commander E. E.
Eccles, Rt. Hon. Sir David


Amery, Julian (Preston, N.)
Burden, F. F. A.
Eden, J. B. (Bournemouth, West)


Amory, Rt. Hn. Heathcoat (Tiverton)
Butcher, Sir Herbert
Elliot, R.W.(Ne'castle upon Tyne, N.)


Anstruther-Gray, Major Sir William
Butler, Rt. Hn. R.A. (Saffron Walden)
Emmet, Hon. Mrs. Evelyn


Arbuthnot, John
Carr, Robert
Errington, Sir Eric


Armstrong, C. W.
Cary, Sir Robert
Erroll, F. J.


Ashton, H.
Channon, H. P. G.
Fell, A.


Astor, Hon. J. J.
Chichester-Clark, R.
Finlay, Graeme


Baldock, Lt.-Cmdr. J. M.
Clarke, Brig. Terence (Portsmth, W.)
Fisher, Nigel


Balniel, Lord
Conant, Maj. Sir Roger
Fletcher-Cooke, C.


Barlow, Sir John
Cooke, Robert
Forrest, G.


Barter, John
Cooper, A. E.
Fort, R.


Batsford, Brian
Cooper-Key, E. M.
Fraser, Hon. Hugh (Stone)


Beamish, Col. Tufton
Cordeaux, Lt.-Col. J. K.
Freeth, Denzil


Bell, Philip (Bolton, E.)
Corfield, F. V.
Galbraith, Hon. T. G. D.


Bell, Ronald (Bucks, S.)
Crosthwalte-Eyre, Col. O. E.
Gammans, Lady


Bennett, F. M. (Torquay)
Crowder, Sir John (Finchley)
Garner-Evans, E. H.


Bennett, Dr. Reginald
Crowder, Petre (Ruislip—Northwood)
George, J. C. (Pollok)


Bevins, J. R. (Toxteth)
Cunningham, Knox
Gibson-Watt, D.


Biggs-Davison, J. A.
Dance, J. C. G.
Glover, D.


Birch, Rt. Hon. Nigel
Davidson, Viscountess
Glyn, Col. Richard H.


Bishop, F. P.
D'Avigdor-Goldsmid, Sir Henry
Godber, J. B.


Black, Sir Cyril
Deedes, W. F.
Goodhart, Philip


Body, R. F.
de Ferranti, Basil
Cough, C. F. H.


Bossom, Sir Alfred
Digby, Simon Wingfield
Gower, H. R.


Boyd-Carpenter, Rt. Hon. J. A.
Dodds-Parker, A. D.
Graham, Sir Fergus


Boyle, Sir Edward
Donaldson, cmdr. C. E. McA.
Grant, Rt. Hon. W. (Woodside)


Braine, B. R.
Doughty, C. J. A.
Grant-Ferris, Wg Cdr. R. (Nantwich)


Bromley-Davenport, Lt.-Col. W. H.
Drayson, G. B.
Green, A.


Brooke, Rt. Hon. Henry
du Cann, E. D. L.
Gresham Cooke, R.







Grimston, Sir Robert (Westbury)
Lucas, Sir Jocelyn (Portsmouth, S.)
Rippon, A. G. F.


Grosvenor, Lt.-Col. R. G.
Lucas, P. B. (Brentford &amp; Chiswick)
Roberts, Sir Peter (Heeley)


Gurden, Harold
Lucas-Tooth, Sir Hugh
Robson Brown, Sir William


Hall, John (Wycombe)
McAdden, S. J.
Rodgers, John (Sevenoaks)


Hare, Rt. Hon. J. H.
Macdonald, Sir Peter
Roper, Sir Harold


Harris, Frederic (Croydon, N.W.)
Mackeson, Brig. Sir Harry
Ropner, Col. Sir Leonard


Harris, Reader (Heston)
McLaughlin, Mrs. P.
Russell, R. S.


Harrison, Col. J. H. (Eye)
Maclay, Rt. Hon. John
Sandys, Rt. Hon. D.


Harvey, Sir Arthur Vere (Macclesf'd)
Maclean, Sir Fitzroy (Lancaster)
Scott-Miller, Cmdr. R.


Harvey, John (Walthamstow, E.)
McLean, Neil (Inverness)
Sharples, R. C.


Hay, John
Macleod, Rt. Hn. Iain (Enfield, W.)
Shepherd, William


Head, Rt. Hon. A. H.
Macmillan, Maurice (Halifax)
Simon, J. E. S. (Middlesbrough, W.)


Heald, Rt. Hon. Sir Lionel
Macpherson, Niall (Dumfries)
Smithers, Peter (Winchester)


Heath, Rt. Hon. E. R. G.
Maddan, Martin
Smyth, Brig. Sir John (Norwood)


Henderson, John (Cathcart)
Maitland, Cdr. J. F. W. (Horncastle)
Soames, Rt. Hon. Christopher


Hesketh, R. F.
Maitland, Hon. Patrick (Lanark)
Spearman, Sir Alexander


Hicks-Beach, Maj. W. W.
Manningham-Buller, Rt. Hon. Sir R.
Speir, R. M.


Hill, Rt. Hon. Charles (Luton)
Markham, Major Sir Frank
Spence, H. R. (Aberdeen, W.)


Hill, Mrs. E. (Wythenshawe)
Marlowe, A. A. H.
Spens, Rt. Hn. Sir P. (Kens'gt'n, S.)


Hill, John (S. Norfolk)
Marples, Rt. Hon. A. E.
Stevens, Geoffrey


Hirst, Geoffrey
Marshall, Douglas
Steward, Harold (Stockport, S.)


Holland-Martin, C. J.
Mathew, R.
Steward, Sir William (Woolwich, W.)


Hope, Lord John
Maudling, Rt. Hon. R.
Stoddart-Scott, Col. Sir Malcolm


Hornby, R. P.
Mawby, R. L.
Storey, S.


Hornsby-Smith, Miss M. P.
Maydon, Lt.-Comdr. S. L. C.
Stuart, Rt. Hon. James (Moray)


Horobin, Sir Ian
Medlicott, Sir Frank
Studholme, Sir Henry


Horsburgh, Rt. Hon. Dame Florence
Milligan, Rt. Hon. W. R.
Summers, Sir Spencer


Howard, Gerald (Cambridgeshire)
Moore, Sir Thomas
Sumner, W. D. M. (Orpington)


Howard, Hon. Greville (St. Ives)
Morrison, John (Salisbury)
Taylor, Sir Charles (Eastbourne)


Howard, John (Test)
Mott-Radclyffe, Sir Charles
Taylor, William (Bradford, N.)


Hughes Hallett, Vice-Admiral J.
Nabarro, C. D. N.
Teeling, W.


Hughes-Young, M. H. C.
Neave, Alrey
Temple, John M.


Hulbert, Sir Norman
Nicholls, Harmar
Thomas, Leslie (Canterbury)


Hurd, Sir Anthony
Nicholson, Sir Godfrey (Farnham)
Thomas, P. J. M. (Conway)


Hutchison, Michael Clark (E'b'gh, S.)
Nicolson, N. (B'n'm'th, E.&amp; Chr'ch)
Thompson, Kenneth (Walton)


Hutchison, Sir James (Scotstoun)
Noble, Comdr. Rt. Hon. Allan
Thompson, R. (Croydon, S.)


Hylton-Foster, Rt. Hon. Sir Harry
Noble, Michael (Argyll)
Thorneycroft, Rt. Hon. P.


Iremonger, T. L.
Nugent, G. R. H.
Thornton-Kemsley, Sir Colin


Irvine, Bryant Godman (Rye)
O'Neill, Hn. Phelim (Co. Antrim, N.)
Tiley, A. (Bradford, W.)


Jenkins, Robert (Dulwich)
Ormsby-Gore, Rt. Hon. W. D.
Tilney, John (Wavertree)


Johnson, Dr. Donald (Carlisle)
Orr, Capt. L. P. S.
Turner, H. F. L.


Johnson, Eric (Blackley)
Orr-Ewing, C. Ian (Hendon, N.)
Tweedsmuir, Lady


Johnson, Howard (Kemptown)




Jones, Rt. Hon. Aubrey (Hall Green)
Osborne, C.
Vane, W. M. F.


Joseph, Sir Keith
Page, R. G.
Vaughan-Morgan, J. K.


Kaberry, D.
Pannell, N. A. (Kirkdale)
Vickers, Miss Joan


Keegan, D.
Partridge, E.
Vosper, Rt. Hon. D. F.


Kershaw, J. A.
Peel, W. J.
Wakefield, Sir Wavell (St. M'lebone)


Kimball, M.
Peyton, J. W. W.
Walker-Smith, Rt. Hon. Derek


Kirk, P. M.
Pickthorn, Sir Kenneth
Wall, Patrick


Lagden, G. W.
Pilkington, Capt. R. A.
Ward, Rt. Hon. G. R. (Worcester)


Lambton, Viscount
Pitman, I. J.
Ward, Dame Irene (Tynemouth)


Lancaster, Col. C. G.
Pitt, Miss E. M.
Watkinson, Rt. Hon. Harold


Langford-Holt, J. A.
Pott, H. P.
Webbe, Sir H.


Leather, E. H. C.
Powell, J. Enoch
Webster, David


Leavey, J. A.
Price, David (Eastleigh)
Whitelaw, W. S. I.


Leburn, W. G.
Price, Henry (Lewisham, W.)
Wills, Sir Gerald (Bridgwater)


Legge-Bourke, Maj. E. A. H.
Prior-Palmer, Brig. O. L.
Wilson, Geoffrey (Truro)


Lindsay, Hon. James (Devon, N.)
Profumo, J. D.
Wolrige-Gordon, Patrick


Lindsay, Martin (Solihull)
Ramsden, J. E.
Wood, Hon. R.


Linstead, Sir H. N.
Rawlinson, Peter
Woollam, John Victor


Lloyd, Maj. Sir Guy (Renfrew, E.)
Redmayne, M.



Longden, Gilbert
Rees-Davies, W. R.
TELLERS FOR THE NOES:


Loveys, Walter H.
Renton, D. L. M.
Mr. Legh and Mr. E. Wakefield


Low, Rt. Hon. Sir Toby
Ridsdale, J. E.

EMPLOYMENT, SCOTLAND

Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.—[Mr. Bryan.]

10.11 p.m.

Mr. George Lawson: I asked for this Adjournment debate, Sir, in order that I might raise before the House an important and grave question affecting Scotland. I refer to the problem of long-term unemployment among the youth of Scotland.
In December last there were in Great Britain 2,113 young men under 20 years of age who had been continuously out of work for more than six months. Of those young men, 597 were in Scotland. In the Midlands of England there were 92 and in the London and South-East Region there were 137. In other words, of all the young men under 20 years of age who had been out of work continuously for more than six months, as reckoned in December last, 282 per cent. were concentrated in Scotland. In the Midlands the percentage was 43 and in the London and South-East Region the percentage was 65. This means that Scotland had 6½ times more unemployment of this kind than had the Midlands, whereas the London and South-East Region, which is 1½ times larger than Scotland in terms of insured population, had barely one-quarter of this kind of unemployment in December last.
I have looked at this feature of unemployment for the past four years. I have examined all the reports published in the "Ministry of Labour Gazette", and I find that the position of Scotland having much more than its proportionate share of long-term unemployment is a persistent one. In fact, looking back as far as December, 1954, I find that during this period the proportion of such unemployment in Scotland was 26. 6 per cent. at its lowest and 48·3 per cent. at its highest. In December, 1955, of all the young men who had been out of work for more than six months, nearly half were concentrated in Scotland.
So we have here an enduring, long-term problem, a position where, whatever the variation in terms of full employment, there is this large percentage of long-term unemployment concentrated in Scotland.
What is true of young men under 20 is true, although not quite to the same degree, of young women. According to the figures, in last December there were in Great Britain about 906 women under 20 years of age who had been out of work continuously for more than six months, and of that figure 223, almost a quarter, were concentrated in Scotland. The Parliamentary Secretary may say that these totals are not very large, but they represent young men and women at the beginning of their working lives. They represent not temporary unemployment but long-term, I think we must agree to call it, chronic unemployment. Where there is this degree of chronic unemployment there is a much greater degree of the more temporary type of unemployment. When comparing Scotland with the other regions which I have mentioned, we find the same wide disparity in proportions.
This degree of chronic and temporary unemployment indicates a scarcity of jobs. It indicates a lack of job opportunity. There is not an hon. Member who does not very sincerely believe that all youngsters should be given the widest possible choice of jobs. We now make a business of this matter. We seek to advise youngsters on the kind of jobs which are available. We seek to make clear to them what the implications of different jobs are and what the prospects are. No one will dispute that the choosing of jobs is a serious matter, because it means that one is choosing one's future life.
It was because of this desire on the part of the adults of our country that the youth employment offices and officers, whose excellent job it is to go round schools advising youngsters on jobs and to interview and advise parents on jobs, were brought into being. We know of the anxious consideration which parents give to this matter. It is a mockery that we should do this when there is such a scarcity of jobs that there can be no choice of job, and when the situation is such that youngsters must take the first job that comes to hand and feel themselves lucky in getting a job at all. Under circumstances of this sort, although many youngsters will be at work, the quality of the job in which they are engaged will be very poor in many cases.
I do not think anyone will dispute that there ought to be in every part of the


country many more jobs than there are youths to fill them. Unfortunately, this has never been the case in Scotland. I am not talking about the distant past. I have not had the opportunity to examine the distant past. But looking back over the post-war years, when we have had in Great Britain what has been described by many as over-full employment, the fortunate situation of there being many more jobs for youngsters than youngsters to fill them has never occurred in Scotland.
I looked at the position on the basis of the December figures, which are the latest available. I found that in Scotland there were in December 3,261 boys under 18 wholly unemployed, and I emphasise the word "wholly". At the same time, there were 747 notified unfilled vacancies for boys, thus giving a ratio of 23 unfilled vacancies for every 100 boys registered as unemployed. By way of contrast, on the same date in the English Midlands there were 500 boys under 18 registered as wholly unemployed and 2,658 notified unfilled vacancies, giving a ratio of 531 unfilled vacancies for every 100 boys signing the register. The contrast is startling.

Mr. Hector Hughes: Shocking.

Mr. Lawson: I appreciate that I am taking extremes, but the Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Labour will find that there was quite a number of regions in England where there was a considerable surplus of jobs in relation to the number of boys available. I stress that I and none of my hon. Friends begrudge these job opportunities for the youngsters of the Midlands, but I bitterly resent the fact that nothing like this exists or ever has existed in Scotland.
In Lanarkshire, part of which I have the honour to represent, I was advised only yesterday that there was a total of 1,189 boys and girls under 18 registered as unemployed, and of that total 242 were school-leavers. I am told that 22 out of the boy school-leavers had gone through free apprenticeship courses and eight of the girls, but yesterday none of these school-leavers had had his or her first job, and 39 of them had left school as early as 1st November last and another 31 had left before the summer holidays.
There were also among them three who were handicapped youngsters.
These figures show something of the seriousness and the enduring nature of this problem which affects Scotland. I would not claim that the Government are wholly to blame. I think that I can say, as a Member representing a Scottish constituency and as a Scotsman, that a very large part of the blame for this situation rests with Scottish businessmen and Scottish bankers and controllers of vast insurance companies and investment companies, of which we have many in Scotland. From what I can see, they are much more concerned to take money out of Scotland than to invest in Scotland the money raised in Scotland. That is most regrettable.

Mr. James Stuart: Will the hon. Gentleman say on what grounds he bases that statement?

Mr. Lawson: On the evidence that there is very little new industrial development in Scotland sponsored by Scotsmen. The brightest spots in our economy in the last few years have been developments which have come from elsewhere, notably from the Americans.

Mr. Stuart: That is all good development.

Mr. Lawson: This is an Adjournment debate, and there is not much time. I emphasise that Scots people must do something for Scotland and the people in the best position to do something for Scotland are those controlling Scotland's money. If that can be refuted, I shall be only too happy to have it refuted. We must apportion a large part of the blame to those Scottish people controlling the money.
However, there is much that can be done by the Government. For example, the Government can use the Distribution of Industry Acts with much more direct energy than has hitherto been the case. They can build advance factories and earnestly see to it that there are tenants for those factories.

Mr. Stuart: Supposing the factories are not let?

Mr. Lawson: If there were a genuine effort to find tenants, tenants would be forthcoming.
The Government should utilise their immense purchasing power to place orders in those parts of the country—not only Scotland—where the placing of such orders would do most to develop a balanced economy. Those are steps which could be taken. I am sure that the Parliamentary Secretary will agree on the seriousness of the problem. I have tried to show that this is not just a matter of last month or last year. This is the continuing difficulty in Scotland and has a long-term effect on unemployment and on the fact that our job opportunities are so low compared with the opportunities elsewhere. On behalf of Scotland, I ask that something special is done to meet the difficulties which have arisen and which are continuing.

10.28 p.m.

The Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Labour and National Service (Mr. Richard Wood): The hon. Member for Motherwell (Mr. Lawson) has drawn the attention of the House to a matter of general concern, and he has stated his case in extremely moderate terms. There is very little which is more frustrating and more likely to cause bitterness—and this echoes the hon. Member's feeling—than a setback in one's career at its very beginning. Therefore, the subject which the hon. Member has raised is one which has given me some anxiety.
I was particularly glad to hear him state his case with moderation, because these difficulties do not gain anything from being over-stated, as they occasionally are. I have heard much pessimism about the placing of school leavers, both those who left last summer and those who left at Christmas. Although I do not deny the figures of the hon. Member, I have found that on the whole, although it has been slower and taken longer than usual, the placing of school leavers over the whole country has been going a great deal better than I once feared would be the case.
In some parts of Britain, notably Scotland, the problem which the hon. Member has mentioned is causing much concern. When I was in Edinburgh and Glasgow, about a month ago, a number of people told me of their anxieties about employment prospects for boys and girls leaving school and about the shortage of training opportunities in those areas.
The hon. Member has drawn our attention to two problems—first, unemployment among young people in Scotland and, secondly—upon which the first is based—unemployment in Scotland generally. The percentages of young people unemployed compared with all people unemployed are surprisingly not very different for the whole of Great Britain and for Scotland. For Great Britain the figure is 7·4 per cent., and for Scotland it is 7·5 per cent.

Mr. Thomas Steele: Surely the hon. Member will agree that that is because there is a higher rate of general unemployment in Scotland.

Mr. Wood: That is true. As regards the length of the workless period, which is the point that causes particular concern to the hon. Member, we are dependent on analyses of unemployment, according to age and duration, which are made only every quarter. The last analysis was made in December. The proportion of young people in Scotland who had been unemployed for more than 26 weeks increased during 1958 from 3 per cent. to 48 per cent. These are rather higher percentages than those for Great Britain, but the increase from 3 per cent. to 4·8 per cent. in the proportion of long-term unemployment was no greater than in Great Britain as a whole.
Perhaps we talk too much about percentages in this House. I do not think that the hon. Member is particularly interested in them; he is interested in finding jobs for these boys and girls. One thing that particularly worries him is the situation in respect of vacancies, where the Scottish situation compares very unfavourably with that for the whole of Great Britain. Whereas in Great Britain, in January, 1959, there was about one vacancy for every boy or girl unemployed, in Scotland there were more than three boys or girls unemployed for every vacancy. That is a considerable difference.
I now turn to the so-called bulge—the increase in school leavers—which was the subject of my meetings in Edinburgh and Glasgow last month, and will be the subject of a further meeting I expect to attend in the County of Lanark later this year. I understand that the increase in the number of boys and girls who will reach school leaving age during the next


few years will be considerably less in Scotland than in Great Britain as a whole.
All these matters concern the position of boys and girls leaving school in Scotland and their difficulties in obtaining employment, but they all depend on the other matter that I mentioned—the general unemployment difficulties in Scotland at the present time. When unemployment is rising and vacancies are decreasing, as at the moment, it is more difficult to find openings for those who fall out of employment or are seeking their first jobs, and the period during which they are unemployed increases.
For a long time the position in Scotland has been a great deal more difficult than it has been in Great Britain as a whole. The present percentage of 5·4 per cent. unemployment in Scotland is higher than in Wales or in any English region, and it has increased considerably in the last year. There have been increases in all the main industrial groups except textiles, and the biggest increases in unemployment have come in building and civil engineering. There have also been increases in metal manufacturing, in engineering, in distribution and in agriculture and fishing.
There are various causes for this, and here again I wish to express my gratitude to the hon. Gentleman for not exaggerating the causes or suggesting, as is sometimes suggested, that the whole blame attaches to the Government. He realised, as most of us realise, that a great part of the difficulties which Scotland is facing, and has faced in the past, arise first from the changes in demand at home which have been taking place over the years, and recently from a falling off in orders from abroad.
It is important to see what the Government are doing to try to help meet this long-term situation, as the hon. Gentleman rightly called it. We have taken a number of measures which I do not think that I had better outline now—owing to the shortness of time—to try to stimulate trade and investment. We have relaxed the restrictions on credit and capital investment which I hope will have a considerable effect on the building industry. The difficulties relating to heavy steel are to a large extent caused by the overstocking which has taken place. The end of that situation should provide a considerable relief for the steel industry.

Certainly the improvement in building and in steel which I hope will take place in the near future will make a great difference to the employment situation in Scotland.
Not only this Government, but the Labour Government who were in office immediately after the war, have made long-term efforts to try to increase employment in Scotland. The Distribution of Industry Act, 1945, was passed by the Labour Government and under this the whole of the main industrial belt as well as Dundee and part of the Highlands have been scheduled as Development Areas. There has also been a continuous effort to try to persuade suitable industries to go to Scotland. The Board of Trade estimate that during 1958 4½ million square feet of factory space, providing nearly 9,000 more jobs, were completed in Scotland.

Mr. Lawson: The hon. Gentleman said that the jobs have been provided. Were they provided or is that an estimate?

Mr. Wood: I am told that the jobs have been provided by this extra factory building which took place in 1958. There has been a decision to expand the sheet steel production capacity in North Lanarkshire which I hope will not only increase production in the iron and steel industry, but will also bring other steel-using industries to Scotland. In addition, many areas are eligible for benefit under the provisions of the Distribution of Industry (Industrial Finance) Act. Ten applications from firms have been recommended for approval by D.A.T.A.C., and a certain number are being considered.

Dr. J. Dickson Mabon: How many?

Mr. Wood: Thirteen are being considered at present.
The hon. Member has made clear his concern about this problem. I hope I have succeeded in making my concern about it equally clear. I am sure that the problems of Scotland, which the hon. Member has referred to tonight, and which were stated to me by a number of people when I visited Scotland, are deep-seated problems. But both under the previous Labour Government and under this Government contributions have been made towards their solution. Those contributions must continue to be made.


not only at times like the present, when we are suffering from economic slackness, but in times in the future when there may be greater economic activity. It is in these later periods that the hopes of dis-

persing industry are brighest, and that a solution to Scotland's deep-seated problems seems to lie.

Question put and agreed to.

Adjourned accordingly at twenty-one minutes to Eleven o'clock.